Gallo and Galluzzo were eating their sandwiches, which were actually more like half-loaves, with a bottle of wine and two paper cups between them. Signora Clementina’s window was slightly higher than the one across the street, and by some strange effect of perspective, the two policemen and the various objects in the room looked slightly en-larged.
“In winter, when they had the light on, you could see better,” the woman commented, letting the curtain drop.
Montalbano returned to his chair.
“So, signora, what did you see?” he asked.
Clementina Vasile Cozzo told him.
o o o
When she’d finished her story and he was already taking his leave, the inspector heard the front door open and close.
“The housekeeper’s here,” said Signora Clementina.
A girl of about twenty, short, stocky, and stern-looking, cast a stern glance at the intruder.
“Everything all right?” she asked suspiciously.
“Oh yes, everything’s fine.”
“Then I’ll go in the kitchen and put the water on,” she said. And she exited, in no way reassured.
“Well, signora, thank you so much . . . ,” the inspector began, standing up.
“Why don’t you stay and eat with me?”
Montalbano felt his stomach blanch. Signora Clementina was sweet and nice, but she probably lived on semolina and boiled potatoes.
“Actually, I have so much to—”
“Pina, the housekeeper, is an excellent cook, believe me.
For today she’s made pasta alla Norma, you know, with fried eggplant and ricotta salata.”
“Jesus!” said Montalbano, sitting back down.
“And braised beef for the second course.”
“Jesus!” repeated Montalbano.
“Why are you so surprised?”
“Aren’t those dishes a little heavy for you?”
“Why? I’ve got a stronger stomach than any of these twenty-year-old girls who can happily go a whole day on half an apple and some carrot juice. Or perhaps you’re of the same opinion as my son Giulio?” “I don’t have the pleasure of knowing what that is.”
“He says it’s undignified to eat such things at my age. He considers me a bit shameless. He thinks I should live on por-ridges. So what will it be? Are you staying?”
“I’m staying,” the inspector replied decisively.
o o o
Crossing the street, he climbed three steps and knocked at the door to the office. Gallo came and opened up.
“I relieved Galluzzo,” he explained. Then: “Did you come from the office, Chief ?”
“No, why?”
“Fazio phoned here asking if we’d seen you. He’s looking for you. Says he’s got something important to tell you.” The inspector ran to the phone.
“Sorry to bother you, Inspector, but it seems we have a serious new development. Do you remember, yesterday, you told me to put out an allpoints bulletin for this Karima?
Well, about half an hour ago, Mancuso of the Immigration Bureau called me from Montelusa. He says he’s managed to find out, purely by chance, where the girl lives.”
“Let’s have it.”
“She lives in Villaseta, at 70 Via Garibaldi.”
“I’ll be right over, we’ll go together.”
o o o
At the main entrance to headquarters he was stopped by a well-dressed man of about forty.
“Are you Inspector Montalbano?”
“Yes, but I’m in a rush.”
“I’ve been waiting for you for two hours. Your colleagues didn’t know if you were coming back or not. I’m Antonino Lapècora.”
“The son? The doctor?”
“Yes.”
“My condolences. Come inside. But I can only give you five minutes.”
Fazio appeared.
“Car’s ready.”
“We’ll leave in five minutes. I have to talk to this gentleman first.”
They went into his office. The inspector asked the doctor to sit down, then sat down himself, behind the desk.
“I’m listening.”
“Well, Inspector, I’ve been living in Valledolmo, where I practice my profession, for about fifteen years. I’m a pediatri-cian. I got married in Valledolmo. I mention this merely to let you know that I haven’t had a close relationship with my parents for some time. Actually, we’ve never been very inti-mate. We always spent the obligatory holidays together, of course, and we used to phone each other twice a month.
That was why I was so surprised to receive a letter from my father early last October. Here it is.”
He reached into his jacket pocket, took out the letter, and handed it to the inspector.
My dear Nino,
I know this letter will surprise you. I have tried to keep you from knowing anything about some business I’m involved in which is threatening to turn very serious. But now I realize I can’t go on like this. I absolutely need your help. Please come at once. And don’t say anything to Mama about this note. Kisses.
papa
“And what did you do?”
“Well, see, I had to leave for NewYork two days later . . .
I was away for a month. When I got back, I phoned Papa and asked him if he still needed my help, and he said no. Then we saw each other in person, but he never brought up the subject again.” “Did you have any idea what this dangerous business was that your father was referring to?”
“At the time I thought it had to do with the business he’d wanted to reopen in spite of the fact that I was strongly against it. We even quarreled over it. On top of that, Mama had mentioned he was involved with another woman and was being forced to spend a lot of money—” “Stop right there. So you were convinced that the help your father was asking you for was actually some sort of loan?”
“To be perfectly frank, yes.”
“And you refused to get involved, despite the desperate, disturbing tone of the letter.”
“Well, you see—”
“Do you make a good living, Doctor?”
“I can’t complain.”
“Tell me something: why did you want me to see the letter?”
“Because the murder put everything in a whole new light. I thought it might be useful to the investigation.”
“Well, it’s not,” Montalbano said calmly. “Take it back and treasure it always. Do you have any children, Doctor?”
“A son, Calogerino. Four years old.”
“I hope you never need him for anything.”
“Why?” asked Dr. Antonino Lapècora, bewildered.
“Because, if he’s his father’s son, you’re screwed, sir.”
“How dare you!”
“If you’re not out of my sight in ten seconds, I’ll have you arrested for the first thing I can think of.” The doctor fled so quickly he knocked over the chair he’d been sitting on.
Aurelio Lapècora had desperately asked his son for help, and the guy decided to put an ocean between them.
o o o
Until thirty years ago, Villaseta consisted of some twenty houses, or rather cottages, arranged ten on each side of the provincial road between Vigàta and Montelusa. In the boom years, however, the frenzy of construction (which seemed to be the constitutional foundation of our country: “Italy is a Republic founded on construction work”) was accompanied by a road-building fever, and Villaseta thus found itself at the intersection of three high-speed routes, one superhighway, one so-called link, two provincial roads, and two interprovin-cial roads. Several of these roads, after a few kilometers of picturesque landscape with guardrails appropriately painted red where judges, policemen, carabinieri, financiers, and even prison guards had been killed, often surprised the unwary traveler by suddenly ending inexplicably (or all too explicably) against a hillside so desolate as to feed the suspicion that it had never been trod by human foot. Others instead came to an abrupt halt at the seashore, on beaches of fine blond sand with not a single house as far as the eye could see, not a single boat on the horizon, promptly plunging the unwary traveler into the Robinson Crusoe syndrome.