Game of Mirrors (14 page)

“So during all that time, you never noticed that the door was open or unlocked?”

“Never.”

Montalbano instinctively felt he should press further.

“But didn’t you ever feel curious to . . . ?”

“I certainly did.”

“And you never wanted to satisfy your curiosity?”

“Well . . .”

“Signora, listen: you would be giving us a great gift if you . . .”

“Oh, all right. One day, I took a hairpin an’ . . . It took me a whole hour. An’ you know what was in there? Nothin’. A bed, a wardrobe, an’ a metal bookcase.”

“And what was on the shelves?”

“A few computers an’ some printers.”

They’d just come out when Fazio’s cell phone rang.

“It’s Catarella,” said Fazio.

Then, a moment later:

“What’s going on?”

He stood there for about half a minute, listening, then said:

“All right, all right, we’ll be right there.”

Then, turning to the inspector:

“I didn’t understand a goddamn thing.”

Ten minutes later they were standing in front of Catarella, who was all agitated and upset.

“Summon ’at calls ’isself Spinoccia called ’n’ said ’e, ’e bein’ ’im, meanin’ Spinoccia, says ’e foun’ a car all boint up by fire inna Melluso districk rounnabout where’s the drinkin’ truff.”

“So you’re making all this commotion over a car that burned up?” Montalbano asked.

“No, Chief, all the commission’s over the reason whereforats inside it—it bein’ it, meanin’ the car—’e found—’e bein’ still ’im, meanin’ Spinoccia—foun’ a dead body in cadaveristick condission.”

Well, that certainly changed things. Montalbano and Fazio looked at each other.

“Shall we take a squad car?” asked Fazio.

“You take one with Gallo,” the inspector replied. “I’ll follow behind you in mine.”

He went down to the parking lot to wait for Fazio to return with Gallo.

“There’s a problem,” Fazio said as soon as he reappeared. “Neither me nor Gallo knows where this Melluso district is.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“I’ll ring City Hall.”

At that moment they saw Catarella rushing towards them with his arms raised and yelling.

“Stop! Stop!”

“What is it?” asked Montalbano.

“I tink I made a mistake,” said Catarella.

“What kind of mistake?”

“Wha’d I say the districk was?”

“Melluso,” the three said in chorus.

“Beckin’ yer partin’, guys, bu’ Melluso’s the name odda guy ’at was the one ’oo called. The districk’s called Spinoccia.”

Montalbano cursed.

“I know where it is,” said Gallo, racing towards his car.

“No speeding!” Montalbano shouted at him. “Otherwise I’ll never be able to keep up with you.”

Just outside of town in the direction of Montereale, Gallo turned onto an unpaved road that cut through the open countryside. After going a few miles, he turned left, onto a dirt track that was all humps and holes. It was like being on a boat during a storm.

Despite the warning he’d been given and the terrible condition of the road, Gallo was speeding nonetheless, and Montalbano was having a hard time keeping up.

It was one big cursefest of all the saints in heaven.

After some fifteen minutes of this—during which they didn’t see another living soul, not even a bird in flight, aside from a three-legged dog—right before a curve they came upon a man standing in the middle of the road and signaling for them to stop.

They pulled up and got out of their respective cars. Meanwhile, the man approached. He was a peasant of about fifty, tall with a sun-baked face and as thin as a sardine.

“Are you Signor Melluso?” the inspector asked.

“Yessir, I am. Donato Melluso.”

“Where’s the car?”

“Just past the bend.”

The car was in a clearing behind a drinking trough that hadn’t seen any water for a good hundred years. The fire had also torched a nearby tree, itself long dry.

All that remained of the car was a metal skeleton turned brown by the flames. It had no license plate, and it was unclear what model it was.

On what must have been the backseat lay a strange black thing, a human body, in a contorted position.

Was it a man or a woman?

Montalbano drew near to have a better look, leaned forward, and only then did the terrible, clinging smell of burnt flesh reach his nostrils.

It wasn’t strong. No doubt a good deal of it had already dispersed in the air, which was a sign that the car had been there for a while; still, it was strong enough to make the inspector start gagging.

Before rushing away, he turned to Fazio, who was staring at the scene without moving, and said:

“Alert the whole circus: Pasquano, prosecutor, Forensics . . .”

Then he went up to Melluso.

“When did you discover this?” he asked.

“About an hour and a half ago, at the most. I saw it when I’s on my way to my field, an’ I went an’ had a look,
just out of curiosity. I called you as soon as I noticed there was a body inside.”

“How did you do that?”

Melluso gave him a confused look.

“How’s I supposed to do it? With my cell phone.”

And, by way of proof, he dug it out of his pocket.

Montalbano bit his lip. It was one of the many signs of aging, he thought—this refusal to accept that everyone, even anchorite monks, had cell phones these days.

“So the car wasn’t here yesterday?”

“I dunno.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause I hadn’t been out this way for a week, on account of I was sick. I live in Vigàta.”

“But doesn’t anyone else ever pass along this road?”

“Oh, they pass all right, they pass.”

“I’m positive this car’s been here for a few days already.”

“So?”

“So how do you explain the fact that nobody called us earlier?”

“You’re asking me? Y’oughter ask them that surely passed by an’ didn’t call.”

There was something in Melluso’s voice that prompted Montalbano to ask him another question.

“How much farther does this road go?”

“’Bout a k’lometer.”

“Are there any houses along it?”

“There’s two houses. One of ’em belongs to Peppi Lanzetta an’ the other to Japico Indelicato.”

Without wanting to make it seem so, the man had given Montalbano two pieces of precise information.

The inspector turned away from Melluso and went over to Fazio.

“Did you call?”

“Yessir. But from what I could gather, nobody’s going to be here for at least another hour.”

“Listen, I’m going to take advantage of the delay and go talk to a couple of people who live here nearby.”

“Wait a second, I wanted to tell you something. In my opinion, this man was burned alive.”

“How can you tell?”

“
He was goat-tied
.”

“But didn’t the fire burn up the rope?”

“They didn’t use a rope, but a chain. Come and I’ll show you.”

“Not on your life,” said Montalbano. “I’ll take your word for it.”

Peppi Lanzetta could have just as easily been sixty years old as ninety. Hoeing the land from dawn to dusk all his life had twisted his body to the point where it looked like a Saracen olive tree.

He wore glasses with lenses half an inch thick.

“No, sir, I din’t see nothin’. I ain’t left my house for about ten days.”

“Don’t you ever go into town?”

“What for? I got everything I need. I don’t got any family in Vigàta. An’ I can’t hardly see no more. I’m afraid o’ getting’ run over by a car.”

Japico Indelicato, on the other hand, was a strapping thirty-year-old who didn’t seem afraid of anyone.

“No, sir, I don’t know anything about any burnt-up car. And I’m telling you the truth. I got nothing to hide. I haven’t been into town for three days. But I have to go in tomorrow.”

“So three days ago there was no car there?”

“There might’ve been, but it wasn’t burnt up yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I was going down in my old Fiat 500 as it was just getting dark, on my way to dinner at my girlfriend’s house, when right around the trough I had to slow down to let two cars pass, which then went and stopped right behind the trough. I’d gone about another fifty yards when my girlfriend called me on my cell phone saying her mother didn’t feel too good and so it was better if we did it another time. And so I turned around, and when I passed by the trough the two cars were still there.”

“But weren’t there any people?”

“Sure there were! There were three people standing outside the cars, talking.”

“Did you manage to see their faces?”

“Not really. It was too dark.”

“Can you tell me anything about the cars?”

“I’m not too good with car models. All I can say is that one was small and white and the other was big and light brown.”

They must have torched the small one.

Disappointed, Montalbano extended his hand to the young man, but Indelicato did not shake it. He hadn’t noticed it, lost as he was in thought.

“On the other hand . . .” he said.

“On the other hand?”

“I don’t know if it’d be of any use to you.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“I always play Bancolotto.”

And so? What did that have to do with anything?

“Oh yeah?”

“Yessir. And so I memorized the two license plates. Tomorrow I’m gonna go and play those numbers.”

The inspector rejoiced.

“You have the license plates?!”

“Not all of them, just the numbers.”

Better than nothing.

“Let me have them.”

The young man pulled a small piece of paper out of his pocket.

“I wrote them down afterwards. The number of the small car was 225; and the big car, 866.”

Montalbano wrote them down on a piece of paper.

“I’m gonna play a straight tern,” said the young man. “Twenty-two, fifty-eight, and sixty-six.”

“Best of luck,” said Montalbano.

But Japico Indelicato didn’t reply. He was lost in thought again.

“I’m just remembering . . .” he said.

Montalbano didn’t breathe a word.

“When I stopped to let the cars by, I read the license plate on the first car, which was the small one, but then I was also able to read the number on the big car, too, by looking in the rearview mirror.”

Another game of mirrors.

“And aside from the numbers, the letters on the big car’s plate made me think of something . . . but right now I can’t remember what it was.”

“If it comes back to you, could you call me?”

“Absolutely.”

When he drove past the trough again, the inspector saw that the circus hadn’t arrived yet, and so he waved bye-bye to Fazio and kept on going.

What was he doing there anyway?

On his way to the station, he felt restless and troubled. Something was spinning around in his head, but he couldn’t grasp what it was.

“Any news, Cat?”

“Nuttin’, Chief.”

“Is Inspector Augello here?”

“Yessir, ’e’s onna premisses.”

“Send ’im to me.”

Mimì walked in triumphantly.

“Do you want me to sing the march from
Aida
?” said Montalbano.

Augello didn’t even hear him.

“O ye of little faith!”

“Tell me everything.”

“I sent out the search notice, and barely five minutes later they called me from San Cataldo.”

“And wha’d they say?”

“That Adriano Lombardo was stopped by a Road Police patrol for speeding. He was on his way back from Catania.”

“Did they let him go?”

“Of course. What did you expect, that they would arrest him? He’ll get slapped with a nice fine and lose a few points on his license. But, if nothing else, we now know he hasn’t left the island and he’s still in the neighborhood.”

“But did they get his address?”

“Come on. Albergo Trinacria, Caltanissetta.”

“Did you try calling?”

“Of course. They told me Signor Lombardo checked out this morning.”

“Did you ask if he was alone?”

“What kind of question is that? He was alone.”

Which meant simply that the inspector had been wrong.

Liliana had not hooked up with her husband, who seemed to have turned into the Scarlet Pimpernel.

“I’m sure we’ll be getting other reports soon,” Mimì reassured him.

It was time to go home to Marinella. But first he wanted to ring Fazio.

“How are we doing?”

“They’re all still here, Chief, and we’re waiting for the generator with the floodlights. It’s getting dark and we can’t see a thing. We’ll probably be here till morning.”

“Sorry about that.”

The moment he got home, he felt an overwhelming need to take a shower. He also thought he’d been wearing the same suit for too many days and it was time to have it cleaned and pressed.

And so he removed all the sheets and scraps of paper he found in his jacket pockets—there were even some rolled up in the inside breast pocket—and set them all down on the dining room table. Then he went into the bathroom, took a long shower, put on just a pair of underpants, opened the armoire, pulled out a clean suit, and put it on the chair beside the bed.

And since it was hot—not quite as hot as the previous days but still hot—he decided not to put any more clothes on. After all, he wasn’t expecting any visitors, and it was unlikely anyone would be passing by on the beach when he sat down on the veranda to eat.

But before setting the table, he decided to look at the papers he’d taken out of his pockets. It was a sort of weekly chore he did, and it was almost certain that, as had happened so many times before, at least half of those papers and scraps would end up in the wastebasket, and many others would have no more meaning for him.

He pulled up a chair and sat down. On the first piece of paper that his gaze fell upon, there were a couple of words and a number.
Droop to 165
. He felt bewildered. What on earth was that supposed to mean? The handwriting was his, no doubt about it.

Why had he felt the need to write down such an incomprehensible phrase? And what did the number 165 mean?

At that moment the phone rang. It was Livia.

“I’m calling you now because later I’m going to the movies with a friend.”

“Have fun,” he said gruffly.

“What’s with you?”

Droop to 165, that’s what.

“Nothing. I’m irritated because I was going through my papers and I found a note that I’m unable to decipher.”

“Can I be of help?”

“How?”

“Well, you could read it to me, for starters.”

“Droop to one sixty-five.”

Livia laughed. Montalbano got upset.

“I’d like to know what’s so funny!”

“It’s not ‘droop,’ silly!”

“How do you know?”

“Because we talked about it the other night.”

Montalbano was incredulous.

“You and I talked the other night about drooping—”

“No! The word isn’t ‘droop.’ I think you meant to write ‘drop.’”

She was right. Now he remembered everything. Livia had told him that his body mass index was such and such, that he should therefore eat less and bring his weight down to 165, and he must have distractedly made a note of it.

They chatted for another five minutes, then said good night. Montalbano went back to looking at his papers.

He picked up a small scrap.

Suzuki
GK
225
RT
.

He very nearly fell out of his chair. This was the license plate number of Liliana’s car, which the mechanic had given to him.

He started frantically searching through all the scraps of paper until he found the note with the license plate numbers Japico Indelicato had given him. According to
Indelicato, the number of the smaller car, the one that had been torched, was 225. The exact same number the mechanic had given him.

This was the thought that had been tormenting him on his way back from Spinoccia and he hadn’t been able to bring it into focus.

It was 99 percent certain that the burnt car was Liliana’s.

He grabbed the telephone and called Fazio.

“Send me Gallo with the car, would you?”

He didn’t feel like driving at night over that treacherous dirt road.

He leapt to his feet, got dressed in a hurry—shirt, jeans, and jacket.

Gallo arrived half an hour later.

You could see the glow of the floodlights from afar. They made a luminous aura in the sky.

They were all still there on the premisses, as Catarella would have said. Apparently the people with the generator had only just shown up.

Fazio came running up to the inspector.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“It’s possible the torched car is Liliana’s.”

The inspector showed him the two scraps of paper and explained everything.

“Have they pulled the body out yet?”