“Too long. Let’s call him simply Alvarez.The shop owner Alvarez, however—though openly contradicting himself—claims not to recognize Salinas as the gunman.You with me so far?”
“I’m with you.”
“On the other hand, Salinas claims to have an alibi, which, however, he doesn’t want to reveal to Martinez.And so the inspector continues straight down his road, convinced that the reason Salinas doesn’t want to reveal his alibi is that he hasn’t got one. Is the picture clear?”
“Quite. At this point, however, I—I mean, Martinez, begins to doubt: What if Salinas really does have an alibi, and pulls it out at the trial?”
“But this has already occurred to the people in charge of confirming the arrest and bringing the accused to justice!” said Giarrizzo, tripping over a rug and threatening to collapse on top of the inspector, who for a moment feared being squashed to death under the Colossus of Rhodes.
“And how have they resolved the question?”
“With supplementary investigations concluded three months ago.”
“But I never—”
“Martinez wasn’t assigned this task because he’d already done his part. To conclude: Salinas’s alibi is apparently a woman, his mistress, whose company he was in at the moment that Alvarez was shot.”
“I’m sorry, but if Lic—I mean, Salinas really does have an alibi, it means the trial will end in—”
“A conviction!” said Giarrizzo.
“Why?”
“Because when Salinas’s lawyers decide to pull out this alibi, the prosecution will know how to pick it apart. The defense, moreover, is unaware that the prosecution already knows the name of the woman who is supposed to provide this belated alibi.”
“Mind telling me who she is?”
“You? But you, Inspector Montalbano, have nothing to do with this! If anything, it should be Martinez asking that question.”
He sat down, wrote something on a sheet of paper, stood up, and held out his hand to Montalbano, who, bewildered, shook it.
“It was a pleasure to talk to you,” said the prosecutor. “I’ll see you at the trial.”
He got up to leave, crashed into the half-closed door, knocking it partially off its hinges, and went out.
Still stunned, the inspector bent down to look at the sheet of paper on the desk. It had a name written on it: Concetta Siragusa.
He raced back to Vigàta, went to the station, and said to Catarella as he was passing by:
“Call Fazio on his cell phone.”
He barely had time to sit down before the telephone rang.
“What is it, Chief ?”
“Drop everything you’re doing and come here at once.”
“I’m on my way.”
It was now clear that he and Fazio had gone down the wrong path.
The investigation into Licco’s alibi had been assigned not to him, Montalbano, but surely to the carabinieri, at the instruction of Giarrizzo. And equally surely, the Cuffaros had learned of the existence of this investigation by the men in black.
This meant that, whatever behavior he displayed in court, it would never have the slightest influence on the outcome of the trial.
Therefore all the pressure exerted on him—the ransacking of his house, the attempted arson, the anonymous phone call—had nothing to do with the Licco affair. So what, then, did they want from him?
Fazio listened in absolute silence to the conclusions the inspector had drawn after his chat with Giarrizzo.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said at the end.
“No ‘maybe’ about it.”
“We’ll have to wait and see what their next move is, after they failed to burn down your house.”
Montalbano slapped his forehead.
“They’ve already made their move! I forgot to tell you!”
“What’d they do?”
“I got an anonymous phone call.”
And he repeated the message to Fazio.
“The problem is, you don’t know what it is they want you to do.”
“Let’s hope that their next move, as you say, will give us some idea. Have you managed to find out anything else about Gurreri?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“But what?”
“I need more time. I’d like to confirm it.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“Apparently he was recruited about three months ago.”
“By whom?”
“The Cuffaros. Apparently they took on Gurreri to replace Licco.”
“About three months ago, you say?”
“Yes. Is that important?”
“I don’t know yet, but these same three months keep popping up.Three months ago, Gurreri left his house; three months ago, the name of Licco’s mistress was discovered, the one who will provide Licco’s alibi; three months ago, Gurreri is recruited by the Cuffaros . . . Bah, I dunno.”
“If you don’t have anything else to tell me,” said Fazio, standing up,“I’m going to go back and talk to a lady who’s a neighbor of Gurreri’s wife, who hates her guts. She had started telling me something, but then you rang me and I had to drop everything.”
“Had she already told you anything?”
“Yeah. She said Concetta Siragusa, for the last few months—”
Montalbano leapt to his feet, eyes popping.
“What did you say?”
Fazio almost got scared.
“Wha’d I say, Chief ?”
“Repeat it!”
“That Concetta Siragusa, Gurreri’s wife—”
“Holy fucking shit!” said the inspector, falling heavily back into the chair.
“Chief, you’re getting me worried! What is it?”
“Wait, let me recover.”
He fired up a cigarette. Fazio got up and shut the door.
“First, I wanna know something,” said the inspector. “You were telling me the neighbor lady told you that for the last few months, Gurreri’s wife . . . And that’s where I interrupted you. Now continue.”
“The neighbor was telling me that for some time now, Gurreri’s wife has seemed scared of her own shadow.”
“Do you want to know for how long Gurreri’s wife has been scared?”
“Sure. Do you know?”
“For three months, Fazio. Exactly three months.”
“But how do you know these things about Concetta Siragusa?”
“I don’t know anything, but I can easily imagine them. And now I’ll tell you how it all went. Three months ago, someone from the Cuffaro clan approaches Gurreri, who’s a small-time crook, and asks him to join the family.The guy can’t believe it; it’s like getting a work contract with no time limit after years of temps.”
“But wait a second, if I may. What use could the Cuffaros possibly have for someone like Gurreri, who’s not even all there in the head?”
“I’ll get to that.The Cuffaros, however, impose a rather harsh condition on Gurreri.”
“Namely?”
“That Concetta Siragusa, his wife, provide an alibi for Licco.”
This time it was Fazio’s turn to be shocked.
“Who told you that Siragusa is Licco’s mistress?”
“Giarrizzo. But he didn’t tell me her name; he wrote it down on a sheet of paper, which he pretended to leave on his desk.”
“But what’s it mean?”
“It means that the Cuffaros don’t give a flying fuck about Gurreri. It’s his wife they want. Who, at a certain point, is forced to play ball, willy nilly, even though she’s scared out of her wits. At the same time, the Cuffaros tell Gurreri that it’s best if he leaves his home; they’ll take care of finding him a safe place to stay.”
He torched another cigarette. Fazio went and opened the window.
“And since Gurreri, who now feels strong with the Cuffaros behind him, still wants to take revenge on Lo Duca, the family decides to lend him a hand. It’s the Cuffaros, not some loser like Gurreri, who staged the horse operation. So, to conclude: For the past three months, Licco has had the alibi he didn’t have before, and in the meanwhile, Gurreri has had the revenge he wanted. And they all lived happily ever after.”
“And we—”
“And we take it up the you-know-what. But I’ll tell you another thing,” Montalbano continued.