“Why, is there some smaller problem we should be seeing inside a problem so large?”
“Yes, if one is willing to see it.”
“And what would that be?”
“The trafficking of immigrant children,” said Fonso Spàlato, opening the door and going out.
Exactly the way it happens in cartoons, two of the journalist’s words—“trafficking” and “children”—materialized in black, as though printed in midair, the rest of the room and everything in it having disappeared inside a kind of milky light, and after one millionth of a second the two words became intertwined, turning into two snakes that scuffled, fused, changed color, then metamorphosed into a luminous globe from which a kind of lightning rod shot forth and struck Montalbano between the eyes.
“Jesus Christ!” he cried out, grabbing hold of the desk.
In less than a second, all the scattered pieces of the puzzle swimming around in his head fell into place, fitting perfectly together. Then all went back to normal, and everything resumed its usual shape and color. What did not return to normal was the inspector himself, because he couldn’t move and his mouth stubbornly refused to open and call the journalist back. At last he managed to grab the telephone.
“Stop that journalist!” he shouted hoarsely at Catarella.
As he was sitting back down, wiping the sweat from his brow, he heard pandemonium break out on the street below. Somebody (it must have been Catarella) was yelling:
“Stop, Pontius Pilate!”
Somebody else (it must have been the journalist) said:
“What have I done? Let go of me!”
A third person (obviously some asshole passing by) took advantage of the situation to cry out:
“Down with the police!”
At last the door to the inspector’s office flew open with a crash so loud that it visibly terrified the journalist who had just then appeared reluctantly in the doorway, pushed from behind by Catarella.
“Nabbed him, Chief!”
“What is going on? I don’t understand—”
“My apologies, Mr. Spàlato. An unfortunate misunderstanding. Please sit down.”
As Spàlato, more confused than convinced, came back in, the inspector brusquely commanded Catarella:
“Go away and shut the door!”
The iris bouquet collapsed in the chair, visibly withered. The inspector felt like spraying a little water on him to perk him up. But perhaps it was best to get right to the point that interested him, and make as though nothing had happened.
“You were talking about a certain traffic . . .”
Heri dicebamus. It worked like a charm. It didn’t even occur to Spàlato to demand an explanation for the absurd treatment he just been subjected to. In fresh bloom, he began.
“You know nothing about it, Inspector?”
“Nothing, I assure you. I would be very grateful if—”
“Just last year—these are the official figures—no less than fifteen thousand minors unaccompanied by an adult relation were tracked down in Italy.”
“Are you telling me they came over by themselves?”
“So it would seem. Of these minors, we can omit, at the very least, more than half.”
“Why?”
“Because in the meantime they’ve come of age. Okay, nearly four thousand—a pretty high percentage, no?—came from Albania, the others from Romania, the former Yugoslavia, and Moldavia. To this number we must add some fifteen hundred from Morocco, and more still from Algeria, Turkey, Iraq, Bangladesh, and other countries. Getting a clear picture?”
“Quite. Their ages?”
“Right away.”
He took a small sheet of paper out of his jacket pocket, reviewed it, then put it back in his pocket.
“Two hundred aged zero to six; one thousand three hundred and sixteen between the ages of seven and fourteen; nine hundred ninety-five aged fifteen; two thousand and eighteen aged sixteen; and three thousand nine hundred twenty-four aged seventeen,” he recited. He looked at the inspector and sighed. “But these are only the figures we know about. We also know that many hundreds of children disappear as soon as they enter the country.”
“What happens to them?”
“There are criminal organizations that have them specially brought here. These children are worth a fortune. They are also considered export commodities.”
“What for?”
Fonso Spàlato looked dumbfounded.
“You’re asking me? Recently a member of Parliament from Trieste put together an enormous quantity of wiretap transcripts that talked about buying and selling immigrant children for organ recipients. The demand for transplants is huge and continually growing. Other minors are made available for pedophiles. Bear in mind that with that kind of child—alone, with no parents, relatives, nobody—there are people who will pay huge sums in order to practice certain kinds of extreme pedophilia.”
“Meaning?” asked Montalbano, his mouth dry.
“Involving torture and the violent death of the victim, to increase the pleasure of the pedophile.”
“I see.”
“Then there’s the begging racket. The people who exploit little children by forcing them to beg for alms are very imaginative, you know. I once spoke with an Albanian boy who’d been kidnapped and then rescued by his father. His captors had crippled him, gravely injuring his knee and then purposely letting the wound fester, so passersby would feel more sorry for him. Another kid got his hand cut off, and another—”
“Excuse me, I have to go out a minute. I just remembered something I need to do,” said the inspector, standing up.
As soon as he’d closed the door behind him, he bolted, racing past a befuddled Catarella like a hundred-meter sprinter, elbows chest-high, stride long and decisive. In the twinkling of an eye Montalbano arrived at the café on the corner, which at that moment was empty, and leaned against the bar.
“Gimme a triple whisky, neat.”
Without whispering a word, the barman served him. The inspector downed it in two gulps, paid, and left.
Catarella was planted firmly in front of the door to his office.
“What are you doing there?”
“I’m standin guard over the suspeck, Chief,” replied Catarella, gesturing towards the office with his head. “Jessin case the suspeck tries to run away agin.”
“Good, you can go now.”
The inspector went in. The journalist hadn’t moved from his place. Montalbano sat down at his desk. He felt better now, strong enough to listen to new horrors.
“I was asking you if these children leave their countries by themselves or if—”
“Inspector, I already told you there’s a powerful criminal organization behind them. Some of them—a minority, actually—come over alone. Others are escorted.”
“By whom?”
“By people who pass themselves off as their parents.”
“Accomplices?”
“Well, I wouldn’t be so explicit. You see, the journey is extremely expensive, and illegal immigrants make tremendous sacrifices to gain passage. But the price can be cut in half if they include a minor who’s not part of the family with their own kids. But aside from these, so to speak, ‘chance’ escorts, there are also the more usual escorts, who do it for the money. These are people who in every respect belong to this vast criminal organization. And they don’t always bring the minor in by blending in with a group of illegal immigrants. There are other ways. Let me give you an example. One Friday a few months ago, a ship equipped for passenger and freight service from Durazzo puts in at the port of Ancona. An Albanian woman by the name of Giulietta Petalli, some thirty-odd years old, comes ashore. Attached to her standard residence permit is a photo of a child, her son, whom she is holding by the hand. By the time the lady arrives in Pescara, where she works, she’s alone. The boy has disappeared. To make a long story short, the Pescara Flying Squad ascertained that sweet Giulietta, her husband, and an accomplice had together brought fifty-six different children into Italy. All vanished into thin air. What’s wrong, Inspector, don’t you feel well?”