Treasure Hunt Page 17

  “And did you tell them who you were?”

  “Of course.”

  “And wha’d they do?”

  “What do you think? That they kicked me out? The marshal was extremely polite and put himself entirely at my disposal. And you know what? The guy’s got a mind just like Fazio’s. He knows everything about every inhabitant of Ragona from cradle to grave.”

  “So wha’d you tell him?”

  “The truth.”

  “What part?”

  Mimì looked puzzled.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Did you tell him the whole truth, from the very beginning, or did you only sing half the Mass?”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “I’ll speak more clearly. Did you tell this marshal of the carabinieri—now pay close attention—that you first saw Alba in a photo album at a ‘house of assignation’ where you’d gone as a client?”

  Mimì first turned bright red, then pale as a corpse. He was about to get up and leave without a word, but then managed to control himself. He swallowed two or three times, ran a hand over his lips, and then said in a slightly quavering voice:

  “No, I didn’t think it was important.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it had nothing to do with what I had to ask him.”

  “It didn’t?”

  “No, it didn’t.”

  “Tell me something. Did the marshal tell you how Alba behaves when she’s in Ragona?”

  “Yes, he said her conduct is irreproachable.”

  “And did you tell him that in fact she occasionally works as a prostitute?”

  “I couldn’t help but do so.”

  “And how’d he react?”

  “He was very surprised.”

  “Only surprised?”

  “He said that from now on he would keep an eye on her.”

  “All right. This is where I wanted to take you. The honest public servant of the police didn’t hesitate to let the carabinieri know that Alba had worked as a prostitute, neglecting, however, to say that he himself had wanted to be a client of hers. That’s all. You were able to leave looking as clean as when you arrived, whereas she’s now branded as a whore.”

  “But it was you yourself who gave me the assignment to go and look for her, to make her talk and—”

  “The assignment I gave you was to go and meet with her alone, without involving anyone else. In fact I even asked you to resort to your well-known arts as a seducer. And this, indirectly, meant that you shouldn’t involve the carabinieri, the customs police, or the forest rangers.”

  Mimì remained silent for a moment. Then he said:

  “You’re right.”

  “That’s all. Go on.”

  “The marshal agreed with me that it was rather unlikely the parents knew anything about the life their daughter led. Since Alba’d had an accident on her moped the day before, he had a carabiniere summon her using that as an excuse. When the girl came in they led her into the room that the marshal had made available to me.”

  “Wait a second. Why did she move to Ragona?”

  “Because her father wanted to take her away from the crowd she was running with and managed to get a work transfer and brought the family along.”

  “So what did she say to you?”

  “Well, let me start by saying that she’s an exceptional girl.”

  “You’d already s—”

  “I wasn’t referring to her beauty, Salvo. She was exceptional in the way she spoke to me about what she did. She was perfectly natural, as if she was talking about working as a salesgirl. She didn’t regret it and she wasn’t proud of it, either. Since she was the pride of the house—those were her exact words—the madam would use her to attract new clients by word of mouth and then arrange it so that she didn’t have any regular clients.”

  “So, at any rate, was it all a waste of time?”

  “Basically, yes. But she did tell me something. She could only stay at the house for an hour at a time.”

  “How did she get there?”

  “On her motorbike. She would tell her parents she was going to see a friend, or to the movies, or the library. . . .”

  “Go on.”

  “One day, when she’d finished her hour and was about to leave to go home, the madam told her to be careful. And she explained that in the past few days a client had asked for her twice, and she’d told him she wasn’t available.”

  “So what was the problem?”

  “She said the guy seemed like a loose cannon. The first time he saw her photo he’d got so excited that he actually started to tremble. The madam got scared. And since that day he’d come back three times and got pretty upset that Alba was never available, the madam thought he might be lurking somewhere in the area, waiting for her to come out. So Alba decided to stay at the house for a few more hours. She phoned her mother to let her know and invented an excuse for being late. When she finally left to go home, it was after eight and already dark. When she drove past the Sammartino bridge, where on the right-hand side there are some woods, a car that had been following her ran her off the road.”

  “Did she see what kind of car it was?”

  “No, she never even thought about it. She was too scared. As she was getting up—she’d hardly hurt herself at all—she saw the guy get out of the car and come running towards her. She was so paralyzed by fear that she couldn’t move.”

  “Is she sure the guy did it on purpose?”

  “Absolutely certain. Luckily at that moment another car came by and pulled over. So the guy who’d caused the accident turned tail and ran back to his car, got in, and drove off in a hurry.”

  “I think that tells us the driver was the unhappy client.”

  “Of course. In my opinion, if the other car hadn’t arrived, he would have dragged her off into the woods and raped her.”

  “So Alba didn’t get a good look at his face?”

  “No.”

  “And did he turn up again any time after that?”

  “Well, three days later, our colleagues from Montelusa raided the place.”

  “Do you know what this means, Mimì?”

  “Yes, that I have to track down the madam and get her to describe the client who wanted Alba.”

  “Right. I’ll go and see Zurlo first thing tomorrow morning. You said they arrested her, no? So, even if she’s out, they’ll certainly know where she lives. But we don’t have a minute to lose, Mimì, I mean it.”

  “I know,” said Augello, getting up.

  “Ah, listen Mimì, I almost forgot. I wanted to let you know that the case isn’t ours anymore.”

  Augello, who had already stood up, sat back down.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What’s to understand? Bonetti-Alderighi snatched it away from us and gave it to Seminara.”

  “Why on earth?”

  “Because Seminara is Calabrian, and we’re not up to the task.”

  “So what am I doing going to see the madam?”

  “Just go anyway, because Seminara wants us to work with him. So we’re authorized to conduct a parallel investigation.”

  “Do you think that’s really what Seminara meant?”

  “No, but that’s my interpretation, all right? Don’t you agree?”

  “Me?! Absolutely!”

  “So go and get the madam to tell you everything we want to know, and then we’ll decide together whether or not we should report it to Seminara. Get my drift?”

  “Got it.”

  Ten minutes later, as he was leaving the office, Catarella called to him.

  “Ah, Chief. Yer litter.”

  And he held out the treasure-hunt envelope.

  “Just keep it. If the kid hasn’t come by yet, you’ll see that—”

  “Nah, Chief, the kid come by awright, an’ he copied it down an’ give it back to me. ’E even left a missage.”

  A page from Catarella’s notebook.

  Dear
Inspector

  Just a few lines to tell you my immediate impression after a hasty reading of the new letter. Though I couldn’t explain rationally why, it seemed very disturbing to me.

  Especially the line that says “real tears of joy your eyes will weep.” It’s the choice of the verb here that seems strange to me. Though it does happen sometimes, joy is not usually the reason we weep. Joy usually makes us smile or laugh. But I get the feeling that’s not the case here.

  And then the writer seems so keen to let us know he’s working day and night to make the treasure unique and unrepeatable . . . I repeat, it’s only an impression, but I fear that when we find the treasure we’re going to be in for a nasty surprise. Please keep me informed.

  Cordially yours,

  Arturo

  16

  He put the piece of paper in his pocket and headed home.

  Hats off to Arturo, anyway, since when he’d first finished reading the note himself, sitting under the lighthouse, he’d had the same feeling of unease. But he’d chosen not to analyze it; it would have taken his thoughts off Ninetta. Now that Arturo had brought it up again, however, the feeling was back. It was true: there was something vaguely menacing about those words.

  But all he could do was take note of this, since no initiative was possible at the moment.

  Sitting out on the veranda after eating, he was thinking about when and how Ninetta’s kidnapper might come out of the woodwork, and the only possible scenario spinning around in his head was, unfortunately, that in the next few days someone would call in to say that they’d found the corpse of a young woman in a dump or under a bridge. Then suddenly, under its own power, for no explicable reason, another idea elbowed its way into his mind, pushing aside the image of Ninetta’s dead body and moving squarely into the forefront of his brain.

  He got up, went inside, pulled the treasure-hunt message out of his jacket pocket, grabbed all the other messages he’d received earlier, including Arturo’s note, and went back out on the veranda, spread them all out on the table, one letter after another, sat back down, and reread them all. And then he did it again.

  And little by little, as he was reading and rereading them, and remembering how and when he’d received them, the streets and paths they’d sent him on, the places they’d led him, the wooden hut, the ruined house, the furrow in the middle of his brow grew deeper and deeper.

  But the idea was so loopy, so off-the-wall, so lacking in any solid foundation that he was afraid to formulate it in full, to give it a definitive shape and thereby force himself to consider it as a whole.

  So he just let it float freely in his brain, in scraps and bits, cuts and details, like the pieces of a puzzle, and he kept going over and over these fragments, but in such a way that they continued to remain separate from one another, because once they began to come together and form a coherent picture, he would be forced to take action, to get moving, with the risk, however, that in the end it would all turn out to have been a game, something to pass the time, and on it he would have staked not only his reputation and career—which he really didn’t give a damn about—but also his self-esteem and self-image. No, the more he thought it through, the more he considered it from all sides, the more convinced he became that the treasure hunt was not at all an innocent game, but something decidedly dangerous. Not only did it smell of blood (the lamb’s head was certainly proof of that), but there was a stench of rot, of decaying flesh, of sickness, around the whole affair.

  If things were really the way he was seeing them now, then ever since the first letter, the prize the challenger was dangling as a reward had to be something hair-raising, and he should have realized this from the start.

  Worse yet, he’d taken it as a silly game, an amusement, a prank, and therefore had not given enough weight to all the things his adversary had tried to tell him between the lines.

  But what was all this conjecture based on? On words alone.

  Not only, but on a personal interpretation of a small handful of words. Were they enough to justify forming so fanciful a hypothesis?

  “Let us base our actions on facts.”

  This was what his boss, the man who’d taught him the secrets of the trade when he was a deputy inspector, always used to say at the start of an investigation.

  “It’s facts that matter, Salvo, not words.”

  But what if words helped you to understand the facts? Might it not be better, in that case, to consider words first?

  And how many times in the past had a word that was said or not said put him on the right track? How did the Latin saying go? Ex ore tuo te judico. But even assuming that it was possible to judge someone by his words, the real problem still lay in a question that was at the bottom of all his doubts: Couldn’t the interpretation he was giving the whole thing be completely wrong?

  Maybe if he discussed it with Arturo . . . but the guy would just take to it like gangbusters and start splitting hairs like nobody’s business. . . . No, at this point it was best not to expose himself, not say anything to him about this new idea, which was too wild, too unfounded. . . . The kid might start to think he was getting senile.

  But what if the idea turned out to be right? Wouldn’t he, Montalbano, have a terrible weight forever on his conscience, for not having acted in time? In time? Act? But how?

  All he had in his head was a conjecture, a hunch, of a possible connection within a handful of words. But, even if he managed to persuade himself to do something, what exactly was it he was supposed to do?

  And even this, if he really thought about it, wasn’t true.

  Because he knew perfectly well what he had to do to have at least some kind of proof that his conjecture wasn’t mistaken. He just didn’t have the courage to do it.

  Want to bet that this lack of courage was nothing more than an effect of aging? That’s what people are like when they get old; they become excessively prudent.

  How did the saying go? We’re born arsonists and we die firemen.

  No! Aging didn’t have a damn thing to do with this! It was simply a matter of not making a mistake out of an excess of what one might call youthful enthusiasm over an idea without foundation.

  Oh, yeah? So words don’t, after all, constitute a foundation? And what is human civilization founded on if not words? And what are we to make of In the beginning was the Word?

  Stop, Montalbà, come back down to earth. Where are your cogitations taking you? Can’t you see that you’re so tired you’re starting to talk nonsense?

  In the beginning was the word! Give me a break! I think it’s a better idea if you just go to bed!

  He gathered together the pieces of paper, locked the French door, and got into bed.

  But he didn’t sleep a wink. He was too afraid that while he slept, against his will, the pieces of the puzzle might come together, treacherously, each in its proper place.

  It wasn’t even seven in the morning when the phone started ringing.

  Completely numbed from his bad night, he dragged himself out of bed and headed for the dining room, banging against everything it was possible to bang against, chairs, corners, doors. He was walking exactly like a sleepwalker.

  “Hello?”

  But his voice came out so clotted and incomprehensible that Catarella said:

  “Beckin’ y’partin’, I got da wrong nummer.”

  And he hung up. Montalbano turned around and took two steps back towards the bedroom when the phone rang again. At the first ring, as though ordered by a drill sergeant, he turned on his heels, did an about-face, and grabbed the receiver. He was in an utter daze. He cleared his throat.

  “Hello.”

  “Ahh Chief! Ahh Chief, Chief!”

  Bad sign. Normally Catarella began a phone call in this fashion either when Hizzoner the C’mishner wanted him or as a solemn prelude to the announcement of a little murder.

  “What is it?”

  “A ’Murcan gurl jess called.”

  “But do you speak
American?”

  “Nah, Chief, but I know a coupla woids ’cause I gotta a sister-in-laws ’ass a ’Murcan, ’nso now ’n’ ’enn . . .”

  “What did she want?”

  “She’s rilly rilly upsett an’ scared, Chief! An’ she’s yellin’ into the phone o’the receiver! ’N so, also ’cause she’s so scared ’n upsett, I din’t unnastan’ too much.”

  “What did you manage to understand?”

  “A’ foist she started repittin’ a same ting, kindalike deedee deedee . . .”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “Chief, in a ’Murcan spitch deedee means cadaffer.”

  “Is that all she said?”

  “No, Chief, ’enn she startet sayin’ lecky lecky.”

  “Which means?”

  “In a ’Murcan spitch lecky means lake.”

  The electrical shock that rattled the inspector’s body from his brain to the tips of his toes was almost painful.

  “And then?”

  “Ann’enn nuttin’. She ’ung up.”

  “Fazio there?”

  “’E in’t onna premisses yet.”

  “How about Gallo?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Tell him to come and get me at once.”

  The fog that had been clouding his brain was suddenly gone, as if blown away by a gust of wind. He was perfectly lucid.

  Because he knew, unfortunately, that his hunch was soon to become a certainty. All the pieces of the puzzle that he’d been trying to keep far apart from each other all through the night were now, after that phone call, fitting snugly into their assigned places.

  He didn’t have the time to take a shower or shave, but managed to wash up a little and drink four cups of coffee in a row before Gallo arrived.

  “What’s this about, Chief?”

  “The last stage of a treasure hunt.”

  It was the inspector’s tone that made Gallo realize that it wasn’t the time to ask any other questions on the subject.

  “Where do you want me to take you?”

  “I want you to take the road to Gallotta, and just before the town, there’s a little dirt road with a sign on the left for a wine tavern. You have to turn down that road and stop in front of the tavern. You can go as fast as you like, and don’t forget to turn on the siren.”