The Pyramid of Mud Read online

  “But why did he go into the tunnel?”

  “He was trying to hide. He thought the people who’d shot him were giving pursuit.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” said Mimì. “If he was trying to hide, he would have taken the bike inside the tunnel as well.”

  “He couldn’t, because he fell, and I don’t think he was in any condition to still think clearly. Maybe he no longer had the strength necessary to lift the bike out of the mud.”

  “He must have been caught by surprise in his sleep,” said Mimì.

  “Exactly. Then something must have happened that allowed him enough time to hop on the bike and ride off. And then they shot him in the back, but he was strong enough to keep on riding.”

  “Makes sense to me,” said Fazio.

  The telephone rang. It was Catarella.

  “Chief, I wannit a infoam yiz ’at I finally manitched to retoin ta da premisses.”

  “Did you get lost?”

  “Yeah, Chief. I ennèd up in Trapani.”

  Montalbano hung up, feeling relieved. At least he wouldn’t have to organize any search parties.

  “So, what do we do now?” asked Mimì.

  “You stay here and fill in for me in your usual brilliant fashion. Fazio and I are going back to Pizzutello.”

  The first house past the construction site, about a hundred yards away, was a sort of cross between a two-story suburban home and a peasant house. Whoever built it couldn’t decide whether to make a pretentious mini-villa or a proper farmhouse. To one side was a garage, which was closed. The front door faced directly onto the road. The windows were all shut.

  There was no doorbell. Fazio knocked and knocked, but nobody came to the door.

  After a while they abandoned their efforts and headed for the next house up the road. It was rather large and in an abandoned state, but they could hear a chorus of hundreds of chickens behind it.

  The front door was open.

  “May I?” asked Fazio.

  “Come in, come in,” said the voice of an elderly woman.

  They were expecting to find themselves in a perfectly normal room of a perfectly normal home, but what they entered was instead a space outfitted to serve simultaneously as a combination grocery store, restaurant, and bar.

  And in fact there were three small tables already set for anyone who might want a bite to eat.

  Behind the bar was an old woman with a friendly demeanor and sharp, lively eyes.

  “Would you like some coffee? How ’bout some fresh eggs?”

  Montalbano was dying of curiosity.

  “But what kind of place is this, anyway?” he asked.

  “Just wha’ it looks like,” the old woman promptly replied. “We sell bread, pasta, juice, eggs . . . everything. We can even make you somethin’ to eat. An’ we’ll make you a good cup o’ coffee, too.”

  “But why isn’t there some kind of sign outside?” the inspector asked.

  “’Cause I don’t got no license.”

  “Have you ever requested one?” Fazio intervened, making a stern face.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it! You know how much the bribe wou’ cost to get a license?”

  “But then this is an illegal establishment!” Fazio exclaimed.

  “Establishment? You call this an establishment?” the old woman reacted, raising her voice. “At my age, I ain’t established nothin’ for a long time! What are you, anyway, a finance cop?”

  “No, I’m just—”

  “Then if you’re not, don’t gimme no guff!”

  The woman eyed them and then said to herself:

  “These guys are cops!”

  A second later, shouting loud enough to make Montalbano’s and Fazio’s ears ring, she called:

  “Pitrineddru!”

  Pitrineddru then materialized, though it was not apparent exactly how or from where.

  He was a colossus of about forty, some six and a half feet tall, with a hairline practically attached to his eyebrows, biceps almost three feet in circumference, and hands the size of shovel-blades.

  “Wha’ is it, Ma?”

  “Pitrineddru, my love, these two coppers is sayin’ we’s illegal, an’ I’m afraid they gonna wanna shut down our store.”

  Pitrineddru looked at them darkly and took a deep breath, like a bull about to charge someone.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Montalbano saw Fazio’s right hand reach inside his jacket to take out his revolver. Pitrineddru turned around menacingly. It was a dangerous moment. Calmly, and in a flat voice, Montalbano said:

  “Let’s make a deal.”

  “What kinda deal?” asked the old woman, who had keen ears.

  “I don’t make no deals with cops!” said Pitrineddru, glowering.

  “Shut up and get the hell outta here,” the woman ordered him.

  In the twinkling of an eye, Pitrineddru vanished into thin air.

  “So, you want that coffee or not?”

  “Well, all right.”

  “Then sit yourselves down.”

  Montalbano and Fazio settled in at one of the set tables. Then a man came in and asked for ten eggs, a loaf of bread, and a kilo of pasta. The old woman brought them their coffee and sat down with them.

  “Let’s hear about this deal.”

  “First you must tell me how you knew we were cops.”

  “Because cops—the real ones, I mean—got it written all over their face. So, about this deal . . .”

  “We won’t report you to the Finance Police, but in exchange you must give us some information.”

  The woman’s answer was immediate.

  “It breaks my heart, but I never rat on no one.”

  “I’m not asking you to rat on anyone. I just want to ask you whether a certain person lives around here.”

  “Somebody wanted by the cops?”

  “No, he’s not wanted.”

  “Wha’ss his name?”

  “We don’t know. He’s about thirty, with black hair, about five-foot-nine, with a crescent-shaped scar under—”

  “Giugiù Nicotra,” the woman interrupted him.

  “Do you know where he lives?”

  “I sure do! Right here next door!”

  “In the little house?”

  “Yessirree.”

  “Is he single?”

  “Nossir, he’s married.”

  “We knocked at the door but nobody answered.”

  “I’ss possible the slut couldn’t come to the door ’cause she was too busy fucking somebody.”

  “Are you talking about Nicotra’s wife?”

  “In’t that who we’s talkin’ about? She’s a German girl, ’bout twenty-five, goes by the name of Inghi. She often comes to do her shopping here, takes her bike, all gussied up with her pants so tight they look painted over her ass . . . When her husband ain’t around, she’s often ‘entertainin’.’ An’ I think she also feeds her lovers, too.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “’Cause whenever she comes here she buys a lot o’ stuff, like there was four people in her house isstead o’ just two.”

  “They don’t have any children?”

  “Nossir.”

  “Does he work?”

  “Yessir. He’s a ’countant.”

  “Where?”

  “I dunno.”

  “How can you be so sure his wife entertains guests?”

  “’Cause this road from Vigàta goes on to Sicudiana, an’ so the cars comin’ from Sicudiana have to pass by here. An’ I can sometimes see someone stop at their house and then leave again about two hours later. The big slut. Just think, she even tried to do some things with my saintly boy Pitrineddru . . .”

  “Listen, do you by any chance have the phone number for
that house?”

  “Yessir, I got it right here.”

  Fazio wrote it down.

  “And do you know where the lady normally kept her bicycle?”

  “She’d just lean it up against the wall outside her front door.”

  “Did you hear any strange noises early this morning, around five?”

  “What kind of noises?”

  “A gunshot, for example?”

  “Good God, it was thunnerin’ like bombs this morning! I wouldna even a heard a cannon go off!”

  Fazio and Montalbano exchanged glances. They had no more questions.

  They stood up.

  “A deal’s a deal!” the old woman said.

  “That goes for us, too,” said Montalbano.

  They went out and got into the car.

  “Shall we try the house again?” Fazio suggested.

  “Let’s.”

  But, once again, nobody came to the door.

  “I dunno, but something about this whole thing doesn’t make sense to me.”

  Fazio headed over towards the garage.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I want to see if the car’s in there.”

  He disappeared behind the garage, then reappeared.

  “There’s a little window for ventilation in back. The garage is empty. Maybe the lady took the car out for a drive.”

  “You think it’s as simple as that?”

  “Why, what should I be thinking?”

  “You haven’t asked yourself the biggest question.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Where was she while her husband was being shot?”

  Fazio grew silent and pensive. Montalbano stood there, staring at the front of the house, which normally at that hour should have been drenched in sunlight. But there was no sun that day; it was covered by heavy black clouds. Montalbano went behind the house. Fazio followed him. Back there, it already seemed like night.

  3

  Looking up, Montalbano noticed immediately that there was some light filtering out through the slats of a shuttered window on the upper floor. Fazio also saw it.

  “By architectural logic, that should be a bedroom,” said the inspector.

  “That light has probably been on since last night,” Fazio added.

  Montalbano then had an idea and went back to the front of the house.

  “Let’s make one last try,” he said to Fazio. “Take your cell phone and dial the number the old lady gave you.”

  The inspector went up to the door and put his ear against it. Everything around was perfectly silent.

  However hard he tried, he couldn’t hear any phone ringing inside. Was it possible there was no phone on the ground floor? Or perhaps someone had cut the cables?

  “Are you calling?”

  “Of course.”

  “How come I can’t hear any telephone ringing?”

  “Let me try,” said Fazio, taking the inspector’s place.

  He listened for a few moments and then said:

  “It’s ringing. Far away, but it’s ringing.”

  “So how come I couldn’t hear it?”

  Fazio looked at him but thought it best not to answer.

  And Montalbano immediately regretted asking.

  There was no doubt about it. Not only, with the years, did he not see so well, but he was also going a little deaf. Matre santa! Going around with glasses as thick as Coke-bottle bottoms he could perhaps tolerate, but a hearing aid was absolutely out of the question. At that point he might as well retire to an old folks’ home, as Pasquano was always advising him just to piss him off.

  “I must have too much wax in my ear.”

  “Of course,” Fazio said, looking up to follow a bat flying wildly overhead.

  Were those two words the only thing he knew how to say?

  “Let’s go back to the office,” Montalbano said brusquely.

  “What do you think you’ll do?” Fazio asked as he started up the car, realizing that the inspector had fallen into a bad mood and that it was best to try to distract him.

  “It’s too late now, but tomorrow morning I’m going to see Prosecutor Jacono and get authorization to enter that house.”

  “Think you’ll get it?”

  “Jacono usually doesn’t make any fuss.”

  “What do you expect to find there?”

  “Well, if you really must know, I’ve got a bad feeling. I think we’re going to find a dead woman in there.”

  “I’m afraid you’re probably right,” said Fazio. “But what do you think happened?”

  “I don’t like to play guessing games.”

  “Just to pass the time . . . ?”

  “There are a number of possible hypotheses. One thing is certain, however, and that’s the starting point: Giugiù Nicotra, and maybe his wife, were surprised in their sleep. And I’m convinced it wasn’t by burglars.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “A burglar doesn’t shoot his victim in the back as he’s running away. Whatever the case, the intruders made them get up out of bed just as they were and go downstairs.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because if they’d remained upstairs Nicotra would never have had a chance to run outside. He wouldn’t have even had time to go downstairs.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Once downstairs, they start looking for something, or at least they want something the couple has.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Fazio, if someone breaks into somebody’s home at night and it’s not a burglar, there are only four possibilities. It’s either one of the wife’s lovers, or a kidnapper, or someone looking for something, or someone who wants to know something. But I would rule out the first two cases.”

  “Go on.”

  “As the intruders keep questioning them, Nicotra sees an opening. Maybe a moment of inattention on their part. Nicotra opens the door, knowing that his wife’s bike is always there outside, leaning against the wall. He hops on it and rides off. One of the two men shoots at him and hits him between the shoulder blades. But Nicotra is able to sustain it and keep pedaling into the night. Bear in mind that it’s storming as all this is going on. And so, since they can’t do anything else, they kill the woman and leave.”

  “I’m sorry, but why did they take the car? Which we can assume they did, since it’s not in the garage.”

  “I really don’t know. Maybe they didn’t actually kill the woman but only kidnapped her.”

  “So how should we proceed?”

  “Tomorrow morning, when I’m off to see the prosecutor, I want you to find out as much as you can about Giugiù Nicotra.”

  “Should I say we’ve identified the corpse?”

  “It’s probably better to wait on that. We’ll make it known after I’ve spoken with the prosecutor.”

  “Okay, you can praise me now,” said Mimì Augello, face beaming as on a grand occasion as soon as the inspector walked in.

  “What heroic feat have you accomplished?”

  “In the space of two hours, I’ve carried out the sort of thing the newspapers call ‘a brilliant operation.’”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “As soon as you and Fazio left I got an anonymous phone call. An unknown man told me that a certain Saverio Piscopo, residing at Via Lo Duca, number 4, had received a big shipment and hidden it in his three-month-old son’s stroller. He added that he was reporting this to the police because Piscopo was dealing outside of schools.”

  “And you trusted an anonymous phone call?”

  “Yes, and I was right. There was a kilo of grass in the stroller, together with a lot of chemical stuff.”

  “Did you arrest him?”

  “Of co
urse.”

  “How did he react?”

  “The guy’s a good actor, you know. He pretended he knew nothing, and he couldn’t explain how the stuff got into his baby’s carriage. He kept on repeating that he made an honest living as a stonemason. So, are you gonna praise me or not?”

  “Well done, Mimì.”

  He stood up and was about to go out of his office and home to Marinella when the phone rang.

  “Chief, I gotta tell yiz, ’ere’s a soitan Signor Gambabella onna line.”

  He would have bet the family jewels that Gambabella was actually Gambardella.

  “Hello, Gambardella, what can I do for you? I know that you already—”

  “Yes, Inspector, and I apologize for any trouble I may be causing you. But this concerns something very serious, and I rather urgently need to talk to you in private.”

  “Well, I was just on my way out, but I could stay a little longer and—”

  “I apologize again, but I don’t want anyone to see me going into your police station.”

  So this wasn’t something to be taken lightly. If they were keeping an eye on the guy . . .

  “I see. Do you know where I live?”

  “Yes.”

  “Right now it’s eight o’clock. In half an hour, say?”

  “Okay.”

  The first thing he did when he walked into his house was check and see what Adelina had made him for dinner. Opening the oven or refrigerator at such moments gave him the same feeling he used to get when, as a little boy, he used to break an Easter egg to see what was inside.

  Perhaps to make up for her gruffness that morning, Adelina had cooked him up a glorious pasta ’ncasciata and two big sausage links in tomato sauce.

  What with the nasty weather, fresh fish were hard to come by. There was frozen fish galore, but they weren’t fit for his palate.

  He would warm it all up after Gambardella’s visit.

  He opened the French door giving onto the veranda, but sitting outside was out of the question.

  The doorbell rang, and Montalbano went to greet his visitor. It was Gambardella.

  Reading his fiery articles and knowing the kind of risks he was running, one might imagine Gambardella as a cocky bull of a man with a defiant gaze, whereas in fact he was a tiny bloke of forty-five with a bald head and eyeglasses who wore a jacket whose sleeves were too short.