“Gambling?”
“No, he doesn’t gamble. Maybe at Christmastime, playing gin rummy. No, his mania is for paintings. People say he’s got paintings of enormous value stored in a variety of bank vaults. Apparently when he sees a painting he likes, he can’t control himself. He’d be capable of having it stolen for him. One gossip told me that if the owner of a Degas proposed a trade for his wife, Vanya, he’d accept without hesitation. What is it, Salvo? Aren’t you listening?”
Augello had realized that his boss’s mind was far away. Indeed, the inspector was wondering why whenever anyone saw or mentioned Vanya Titulescu, the subject always turned to painting.
“So, you seem to think,” said Montalbano, “that it was the doctor who ordered Sanfilippo’s murder.”
“Who else, if not?”
The inspector’s thoughts flew over to the photograph still lying on the bedside table. But he immediately let those thoughts go; he first had to wait for an answer from Catarella, the new oracle.
“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.”