Treasure Hunt Page 5

  He got up, cleared the table, and went and got the letter and a pen, then sat back down on the bench.

  Three times three

  is not thirty-three

  Montalbano wrote down the number 9.

  and six times six

  is not sixty-six.

  He wrote 36.

  The figure thus obtained

  another number shall ordain.

  9 plus 36 made 45.

  Add your age to the raffle

  and the riddle unravel.

  He was fifty-seven, and the result was the number 9364557. A telephone number, clearly. Without an area code, which implied that it was from the province of Montelusa.

  So, what now?

  Should he drop the whole silly game or carry on?

  Curiosity easily got the better of him. After all, these were days where he had plenty of time to waste. It had been years since he was last able to blow off whole days. He got up, went into the dining room, and dialed the number.

  “Hello?” said a male voice.

  “Montalbano here.”

  “Is that you, Inspector?”

  “I’m sorry, who am I speaking to?”

  “Don’t you recognize me? It’s Tano, the barman at the Marinella Bar.”

  “I’m sorry, Tano, but since I . . .”

  “What are you gonna do, are you gonna drop by?”

  “What for?”

  “To pick up the letter somebody left for you yesterday. They didn’t tell you?”

  “No.”

  “If you like, I could bring it over to your house, but it wouldn’t be before one o’clock. Closing time, you know.”

  “No, thanks, I’ll come by in about half an hour.”

  Before going out, he checked to see how much whisky there was in the house. Half a bottle. While he was at it, he might as well buy another.

  He’d miscalculated the distance. To get to the Marinella Bar on foot it actually took him forty minutes.

  When he walked in, Tano was setting the telephone down.

  “If you’d got here a minute earlier, you coulda talked to ’em.”

  “To whom?”

  “To the person that left the letter for you.”

  He seriously doubted that person felt like talking to him.

  “Somebody called?”

  “Just now.”

  “What’d they want?”

  “They wanted to know if you’d come by to pick up the letter, and I told ’em you’d be here any minute.”

  “What kind of voice did he have?”

  “Why, don’t you know ’im?”

  “No.”

  “It sounded to me like a fairly old man. But he mighta been fakin’ it. He didn’t say hello, nothin’, he just wanted to know if you’d come by. Here’s the letter.”

  He took it out from under the bar and handed it to him.

  The envelope was exactly the same as the one he’d already received, with the name written in the same way as on the other, and with the same sort of heading: Treasure Hunt. He put it in his jacket pocket, ordered the bottle of whisky, took it, paid, and left. It took him almost an hour to get back. He walked slowly, wanting to enjoy the outing. Back at home, he settled back on the bench and opened the envelope. Inside was half a sheet of paper with a poem.

  Now that you’ve entered the game

  you have no choice but to progress.

  Following this feeble flame

  of mine, try now to guess.

  Tell me, my good Inspector,

  where does the street become tight

  and turn into a wheel, and vector

  straight from the plain to the heights?

  If you can guess, go without further ado,

  travel the whole road and you’ll see

  a place quite familiar to you

  and another that may be the key.

  Aside from the fact that from a metrical point of view, the lines really stank, he didn’t understand a thing. No, actually, there was one thing he understood. That the person writing to him was a pretentious asshole. This was clear from the phrase “my good Inspector,” which seemed to come from someone who thought of himself as God in heaven at the very least.

  Whatever the case, he would never manage to solve the riddle that same night. He needed a map. Therefore the best thing was to go to bed.

  He didn’t exactly get a good night’s sleep. He had strange dreams in which inflatable dolls were telling him riddles that he was unable to solve.

  Gallo came by to pick him up at eight-thirty.

  “Do me a favor, Gallo. After you drop me off, go to city hall and ask them for a topographical map of Vigàta. Or better yet, a street map. If they haven’t got any, ask for a copy of the latest town-planning scheme. Or whether they have one of those views of the whole town, shot from above.”

  “Ah, Chief, Chief!” Catarella exclaimed the moment the inspector set foot in the station. “’Ere’s a jinnelman a-waitin’ f’yiz an’ ’e wants a talk t’yiz poissonally in poisson.”

  “Who is he?”

  “’E sez ’is name izzat ’e’s called Girolammo Cacazzone.”

  “Are we sure that’s his real name?”

  “Who’s asposta be sure, Chief? Me, youse, or Cacazzone?”

  “You.”

  “As fer misself, I’s assolutely soitin! In fact, mebbe Cacazzone hisself ain’t so soitin as’ I’s soitin!”

  “All right, show him in.”

  Two minutes later a man of about eighty appeared with hair completely white, because of his age, no doubt, but mostly because he was an albino. Medium height, shabby suit, dusty shoes, and the look of someone who’s perpetually out of his element, even in the bathroom of his own home. For his age he seemed pretty well preserved, except for the fact that his hands trembled.

  “I’m Girolamo Cavazzone.”

  How could you go wrong?

  “Did you wish to speak to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please sit down and tell me what you have to say.”

  The man looked around with the bewildered air of one who, awakened from a leaden sleep, can’t figure out where he is.

  “Well?” the inspector exhorted him.

  “Ah, yes, right. Excuse me. I’ve taken the liberty of disturbing you to ask you for a word of advice. You may not be the most suitable person, but since I didn’t know who to—”

  “I’m listening,” Montalbano cut him off.

  “You, I’m sure, yes, you don’t know it, but I am the nephew of Gregorio and Caterina Palmisano.”

  “Oh, really? I wasn’t aware they had any relatives.”

  “We haven’t seen each other for some twenty years. Family matters, inheritance . . . I don’t know whether . . . In short, my mother didn’t inherit a thing; everything went to the other two children, Gregorio and Caterina, and so . . .”

  “Listen, please try to organize your thoughts.”

  “Forgive me . . . I’m so mortified. . . . My maternal grandparents, Angelo and Matilde Palmisano, had a daughter, Antonia, one year after getting married. Bear in mind that when she had Antonia, Nonna Matilde wasn’t yet nineteen years old. Then Antonia, when she was eighteen, married Mario Cavazzone, and I was born. But then eighteen years after she’d had Antonia, Nonna Matilde unexpectedly had a son, Gregorio. She was thirty-seven at the time. And then Caterina came along. I’m not sure I’ve made myself clear.”

  “You’ve made yourself perfectly clear,” said Montalbano, who at some point had completely lost the thread, but he didn’t feel like hearing the whole genealogy repeated.

  “And so, being the closest relative, I want you to tell me whether . . . with things as they are . . . since, apparently, things . . . but, of course, all in strict accordance with the law . . .”

  “I’m sorry, but what ‘things’ are you talking about?”

  “It’s just that . . . I don’t want to seem like someone taking advantage of . . . misfortune is always misfortune, for Heaven�
�s sake, and must be respected. There. But since . . . legally speaking, of course, the implication . . .”

  He stopped, took a breath, then blurted out:

  “Couldn’t they perhaps be considered dead?”

  “Who?”

  “My aunt and uncle, Gregorio and Caterina Palmisano.”

  “They’re crazy, they’re not dead.”

  “But they’re not in full possession of their faculties, and therefore . . .”

  “Listen, Signor Cacazzone . . .” Montalbano said in exasperation, purposely getting the name wrong.

  “Cavazzone.”

  “Can we talk straight? You’ve come to me to ask me if there’s any chance you could inherit the possessions of your aunt and uncle, who, though still alive, could be declared not in full possession of their faculties. Is that right?”

  “Well, in a certain sense . . .”

  “No, Signor Cavazzone, that’s the only sense possible. And so my answer is that I don’t know the first thing about such matters. You should see a lawyer. Good day.”

  He didn’t even hold out his hand. That old octogenarian with one foot in the grave, who wanted to scavenge the lives of a wretched pair of crazies, had deeply disturbed him.

  The man stood up, more bewildered than when he’d come in.

  “Good day,” he said.

  And he left.

  “They haven’t got any maps of Vigàta at city hall,” said Gallo, coming in. “And no street guides or aerial photographs, either.”

  “So what have they got? Anything?”

  “They have the new town planning design—six big sheets that cover the whole town—but since the plan hasn’t been fully approved yet, they’re not allowed to grant any public requisitioning of it.”

  “You mean the public can’t request to see it?”

  “No, Chief, they said ‘public requisitioning.’”

  “And what does ‘public requisitioning’ mean?”

  “Asking for a copy.”

  Another word to add to his list.

  “An’ you have to put in an explicit request for it, in writing and on the letterhead stationery of a qualified authority.”

  “And what would be an example of such authority?”

  “Well, you, for example.”

  “All right, but qualified for what?”

  “Maybe for being an authority.”

  “All right, I’ll write you the request and you can take it in to them.”

  “Chief, ’at’d be Signura Cirribicciò’s boy onna line.”

  It must be Pasquale, Adelina’s son, a known ne’er-do-well and thief who spent most of his time going in and out of jail. Despite the fact that the inspector had arrested him several times, he was so fond of Montalbano that he had asked him to be his own son’s godfather, which had provoked a spat with Livia, who, with her northern mind-set, couldn’t grasp how a police inspector could have the son of an ex-convict as his godson.

  “Okay, put him on.”

  “Hello, Inspector, ’iss is Pasquale Cirrinciò.”

  “What is it, Pasquà?”

  “I wannitt a tell ya I took my mutha to the hospital.”

  “Oh my God! What happened?”

  “She got a big scare at yer house.”

  “Why, what happened?”

  “Well, she needed to git a broom, an’ when she open the closet door, two dead ladies fell on toppa her. At lease ’at’s what she tought, an’ she hadda fit.”

  Matre santa, the dolls! He’d forgotten to leave a note to warn Adelina!

  “They’re not . . . They’re not dead ladies, they’re . . .”

  “I know, Inspector. My mutha come runnin’ out the house screamin’ like a banshee an’ then she fainted. When she woke up, she call’ me onna cell phone. An’ so I raced over there to git ’er, but before takin’ ’er to the hospital, I went inside a have a look a’ wha’ was the story. Y’know what I mean? ’Cause if it was a coupla real dead bodies ya wannit a hide or sum’m, I coulda given ya a hand . . .”

  “To do what?”

  “What do you mean, to do what? To get the hassle offa ya hands. Get rid o’ the bodies. Iss pretty easy a do nowadays, wit’ acid.”

  What the fuck was this kid thinking? That he was keeping two corpses at home, waiting for the right opportunity to get rid of them? Better change the subject, otherwise he would end up having to thank the guy for his generous offer of complicity in the concealment of two corpses.

  “And how’s Adelina now?”

  “She’s gotta fever of a hunnert ’n’ four. An’ she’s worried ’bout ya. She tol’ me to let ya know she coun’t cook nuthin’ for dinner for ya tonight.”

  “All right, thanks for calling. Give your mother a hug for me and my best wishes.”

  The youth didn’t respond, but was still on the line.

  “Was there anything else, Pasquà?”

  “Yessir, Inspector, if I could, I’d like a say sumthin’.”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “I jess wannit a say that, a man like you, livin’ all alone an’ all, an’ with yer girlfrien’ who don’t come see ya too often, well, I jess wannit a say iss logickal that . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Iss logickal that every now ’n’ then ya got certain needs . . .”

  “But I’ve already got your mother to help me out.”

  “The kinda help I’s talkin’ ’bout my mama can’t give ya . . .”

  “So what are you talking about, then?”

  “Now, don’ take offince or nuthin’, but if ya wanna nice-lookin’ girl, alls ya gotta do is gimme a ring an’ I’ll fine one for ya, instead o’ usin’ them dolls, ya know? A nice-looking Russian or Romanian girl, or Moltavian, whatever ya like best. Blond, black, anyting ya want. Guaranteed clean and healthy. An’ free o’ charge, since it’s you. Y’unnastan’ what I’m sayin’? Ya want me to look into it?”

  Dumbfounded, now that he grasped what Pasquale was offering, Montalbano was speechless. He couldn’t even manage to open his mouth.

  “Hello, Inspector? Can ya hear me?”

  He hung up the receiver. That was all he needed! And now who was going to convince Adelina and her son that he wasn’t sleeping with inflatable dolls?! He sat there for a good five minutes, unable to do anything except curse.

  5

  Gallo returned about half an hour later.

  “All taken care of.”

  “So where are the papers?”

  “They have to photocopy them.”

  “And does it take so long?”

  “Chief, don’t you know what people working in government offices are like? They wanted to give me them tomorrow, but I managed to persuade them to have them ready by four o’clock this afternoon. But they want ten euros. Six just for the copying, and four for the rush.”

  “Here you go.”

  Fucking treasure hunt.

  And in the meantime he had to shell out ten euros. The mysterious riddler would have to be patient. He might even have to wait till tomorrow.

  Montalbano dawdled about the office until lunchtime. By the time he went out he was dying of boredom.

  How was it possible that there weren’t any more serious robberies, shootouts, or attempted murders? Had they all become saints?

  At Enzo’s he stuffed his guts, partly because he had a good appetite despite the eggplant parmesan of the night before, partly because he wanted to make it up to Enzo for disappointing him the last time. A full battery of antipasti, in the sense that he had a sampling of every antipasto on the menu, spaghetti alle vongole veraci (and truly veraci), and five striped surmullet (and truly striped).

  It occurred to him that Enzo, in the kitchen, had no imagination. He always made the same dishes. But the ingredients were always extremely fresh and Enzo could cook like a god. Montalbano liked a little imagination in the kitchen, but only in the hands of a culinary artist. Otherwise it was best to remain within the bounds of normality.

  And this time
he had to take his walk along the jetty, all the way to the lighthouse. He sat down on the flat rock and stayed about twenty minutes, relishing the smell of algae and lippo, that sort of aromatic green slime that covered the waterline of the rock and teemed with tiny little sea animals. Then he went back to the office.

  Shortly after four o’clock, Gallo brought him the photocopies of the town planning scheme. Six enormous sheets, rolled up and numbered.

  No, he couldn’t bring them home to Marinella. He already had the two dolls there. All that paper would only add to the confusion.

  Taking a quick look around his office he calculated that if he moved the two armchairs and small sofa out of the way, he could create enough space to lay the six sheets out on the floor, lining them up in sequence, according to their numbering.

  He pushed the furniture to the walls, unrolled the first sheet, and spread it out on the floor.

  And immediately the problems started, because the goddamn sheet of paper didn’t want to stay in place and simply rolled itself back up. And so he grabbed the magnifying glass that was on the desk, three different instruction manuals, the penal code, two boxes of paper clips, a box of pens—in short, everything that might serve as a paperweight but didn’t take up too much space—and after some fifteen minutes of cursing the saints, he had managed to spread the sheets out in the proper order, holding them down with a variety of strategically placed objects.

  But the whole turned out to be too big for him to look at while standing over it. So he grabbed a chair and climbed up on it.

  Then he took the poem out of his pocket.

  But how was it that Mimì Augello always happened to come in at moments like this?

  “What movie is playing tonight? Superman? Spider-Man? 007: From Vigàta with Love? Or is this going to be a speech to the nation?” he asked.