“He shit his pants,” Mimì said. “He’s cooked.”
“Good,” said Montalbano. “Take him to Montelusa Central. On your way there, pull over at some point and look around, as if you’re fearing an ambush. When he’s in front of the commissioner, he has to tell us everything.”
“And what about you?”
“I escaped,” said the inspector, firing a shot in the air for good measure.
On the drive back to Marinella, he changed his mind. Turning the car around, he headed towards Montelusa. He took the outer belt and finally pulled up at 38 Via De Gasperi, home of his journalist friend, Nicolò Zito. Before buzzing the intercom, he checked his watch. Almost five in the morning. He had to buzz three long times before he heard Nicolò’s voice, sounding half-asleep and half-enraged.
“Montalbano here. I need to talk to you.”
“Wait for me downstairs, otherwise you’ll wake up the whole house.”
A few minutes later, sitting on a stair, Montalbano told him the whole story, with Zito interrupting him from time to time with comments like “Wait!” and “Oh, Christ!”
He needed an occasional pause. The story took his breath away.
“What do you want me to do?” Zito asked when the inspector had finally finished.
“This very morning, do a special report. Keep it vague. Say that Dr. Ingrò apparently turned himself in because of an alleged involvement in illegal organs trafficking ... You have to trumpet the news, make sure it reaches the national papers and networks.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“That they’ll hush the whole thing up. Ingrò has some very important friends. Too important. And one more favor. On the one o‘clock edition, pull out another story. Keeping it still vague, say that the fugitive Jacopo Sinagra, known as ’Japichinu,‘ has reportedly been murdered, and that he apparently belonged to the same organization that Dr. Ingrò was working for.”
“But is it true?”
“I think so. I’m almost certain this is why his grandfather, Balduccio Sinagra, had him killed. Not because of any moral qualms, mind you. But because his grandson, fortified by his alliance with the new Mafia, could have had him liquidated whenever he wanted.”
It was seven in the morning when he finally managed to get to bed. He decided to sleep the whole morning. In the afternoon he would drive to Palermo to pick up Livia, on her way down from Genoa. He was able to sleep for two hours before the telephone woke him up. It was Mimi. But the inspector spoke first.
“Why did you guys follow me last night when I explicitly—”
“—when you explicitly tried to pull the wool over our eyes?” Augello finished his sentence. “But, Salvo, how can you possibly imagine that Fazio and I don’t know what you’re thinking? I ordered Fazio not to leave the area of the villa, even if I countermanded the order. We knew you’d be there sooner or later. And when you went out of your house, I followed behind you. I’d say we did the right thing.”
Montalbano accepted this and changed the subject.
“So, how’d it go?”
“What a fucking circus, Salvo. They all came running: the commissioner, the chief prosecutor ... And the doctor kept talking and talking ...They couldn’t make him stop ... I’ll see you later at the office and tell you the whole story.”
“My name never came up, right?”
“No, don’t worry. We explained that we happened to be passing by the villa when we noticed the gate and front door were wide open, which aroused our suspicion. But unfortunately the hitman escaped. See you later.”
“I won’t be in today.”
“The fact is,” said Mimi, embarrassed, “I won’t be in to morrow.”
“Where are you going?”
“To Tindari. Since Beba has to go there, as usual, for work ...”
And maybe, on the way, he’d buy himself a set of kitchenware.
What Montalbano remembered of Tindari was the small, mysterious Greek theater and the beach shaped like a pink-fingered hand ... If Livia stayed a few days, an excursion to Tindari might not be a bad idea.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This entire book—names, surnames (especially surnames), situations—is invented out of whole cloth. Any coincidence whatsoever is due to the fact that my imagination is limited.
This book is dedicated to Orazio Costa, my teacher and friend.
NOTES
2 Charles Marteclass="underline" Mayor of the Palace of the Kingdom of the Franks and unifier, with his son Pépin the Short and grandson Charle magne, of the Frankish realm. A fierce warrior and field general (Martel means “hammer”), Charles stemmed the Arab advance into France at the Battle of Tours (more accurately the Battle of Poitiers) in 732.
2 the state monopoly: In Italy, all tobacco products, domestic and foreign, are controlled by government monopoly.
3 defending the police against the students at Valle Giulia: On March 1, 1968, at the University of Rome at Valle Giulia, protesting students reacted to heavy-handed tactics by riot police by hurling stones and setting fire to automobiles, resulting in injuries to both sides. In a now-famous poem written in response to this event, the radical poet, author, and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975), while acknowledging the reasons behind the demonstration, declared his sympathies for the policemen, whom he called “children of the poor,” against the students, who for him were “spoiled rich kids.”
3 with the exception of one who ... had been putting up with trials and incarceration ... and another who’d died in obscure circumstances: The author is alluding to the celebrated cases of Adriano Sofri (born 1942) and Mauro Rostagno (1942-1988). Sofri—founder and ex-leader of the now-defunct extreme left-wing group Lotta Continua—is currently serving a twenty-two-year sentence for having allegedly ordered the murder, in 1972, of police inspector Luigi Calabresi, himself widely believed responsible for the “suicide” of an anarchist, Giuseppe Pinelli, who supposedly threw himself out the window of a police interrogation room when being questioned by the same Calabresi. (This latter event was immortalized by Nobel laureate Dario Fo in the play The Accidental Death of an Anarchist.) Sofri’s ultimate conviction in 1996, after no less than eight trials—one of which came on a prior prosecutor’s appeal of an acquittal, a judicial option that still exists in contemporary Italy—rested only on the much-belated confession (in 1988) and inconsistent testimony of one of Calabresi’s killers, Leonardo Marino. There was no material evidence. The procedures and results of the case have been widely decried by both Italian and international legal experts. Sofri, a distinguished author and journalist, has always steadfastly maintained his innocence and even refuses to ask for a pardon—which would probably be granted if requested—since this would imply guilt.
Mauro Rostagno, another former member of Lotta Continua, was murdered in 1988, in a case that has never been officially solved despite the fact that several Mafia turncoats have testified that the mob was behind the killing. Originally from the north of Italy, Rostagno had moved to Sicily in the 1980s, working as a journalist and commentator for an independent left-wing television station he had helped to found. His nearly nightly critiques of the local power alliances between the Mafia, business interests, and government quickly won him the enmity of local chieftains. Curiously, there was a blackout on the night of his murder. Eight years later, it was discovered that Vincenzo Mastrantonio, technician and manager of the local chapter of the national power-grid company Enel at the time of the murder, had been the most trusted driver of Mafia boss Vincenzo Virga. Mastrantonio himself was murdered eight months after Rostagno.