Treasure Hunt (16 page)

“I don’t understand why he would go into the backseat.”

“It’s a perfect example of the way his thoughts are organized. If he put her out of action in the front seat, how was he going to drive with an unconscious girl flopping all over the place? In the backseat he not only had more room to maneuver, but he can lay the girl down so that there’s no interference with his driving.”

“And when Ninetta comes to and tries to get up, he shoves her back down and puts her away with a few more punches,” Fazio concluded.

“There you go. Which would be part of the scene that Vilardo witnessed when he was in the park.”

For a few moments they both sat there in silence, each lost in his own thoughts about the reconstruction they had just made. At a certain point Fazio started shaking his head and making a doubtful face.

“What is it?”

“Chief, I think there’s something in our reconstruction of the kidnapping that doesn’t make sense.”

“What would that be?”

“Why in all your different arguments did you never take into account the possibility that Ninetta and her kidnapper already knew each other?”

“And what would that mean?”

“First of all, that we should investigate further inside her circle of acquaintances. And second, that Ninetta may have climbed aboard the SUV of her own accord and wasn’t forced.”

“I am convinced that it would only be a waste of time.”

“Why?”

“Because Ninetta and her kidnapper saw each other for the first time in Via delle Rose, at the number three bus stop.”

“What makes you so sure of that?”

“I’m going on what the driver of the three bus told you. When he pulls up, the SUV is stopped and is taking up part of the area reserved for the bus; it’s even a bother both to the bus and the passengers, but Ninetta keeps talking to the stranger in the backseat. How long do you think it takes for the passengers to get into the already full bus? Half a minute? The SUV’s still there. It leaves at almost the same moment as the bus, just a second before.”

“So why does this lead you to conclude that the two didn’t know each other beforehand?”

“Good God, Fazio, just think for a second! If they knew each other, the whole business wouldn’t have lasted more than ten seconds. The SUV pulls up, the driver sees Ninetta standing there waiting for the bus, he opens the door, calls to Ninetta, telling her he’ll give her a ride, she recognizes him and gets in in a hurry so as not to be in the bus’s way, and the SUV drives off with half the passengers still waiting to board.”

Fazio thought about this for a moment.

“You’re right,” he concluded.

Then:

“So what should I do? Go and talk to that lady?”

“I don’t think she saw anything. There’s no point. Instead, you should give Signor Bonmarito a ring and ask him if he has any news. You can call him from here.”

But he didn’t want to listen to the phone call, so he got up and went over to the window to smoke a cigarette. When he’d finished it and turned around, Fazio was setting down the receiver.

“No news. The poor guy was crying.”

Montalbano made a decision.

“Listen. I think you should go see him straightaway.”

“What for?”

“Have him write up a missing persons report. I think the time has come to let Bonetti-Alderighi in on this. He can organize a proper search party, whereas we’re just sitting here holding class.”

But he would take his time. Talking with the commissioner wasn’t exactly the sort of thing that filled him with joy.

“. . . Yes, Mr. Commissioner, the father came in to report her disappearance. I have a well-grounded suspicion that we have a kidnapping on our hands . . . No, I didn’t say anything about evidence, just a suspicion . . . Okay, okay, whatever you say . . . Yes, right, the girl’s a legal adult . . . I’m well aware what the law requires, but, you see, more than forty-eight hours have gone by . . . Inspector Seminara? . . . Ah, you mean he’ll be leading the investigation? . . . No, for heaven’s sake, a distinguished colleague like that, brilliant, in fact . . . No, never fear, no interference on my part . . . Furthest thing from my mind . . . My best regards, sir . . .”

He called Catarella.

“Is Fazio back?”

“’E jess got back now.”

“Tell him to come to my office.”

Fazio came in with a face so sad he looked like his dog had just died.

“What’s wrong?”

“Chief, just spending fifteen minutes with the Bonmaritos breaks my heart. The wife’s laid up in bed and can’t move, and the guy’s no longer right in the head. So sad!”

“Did you get the report?”

“Yessir.”

“Good. Ring the commissioner’s office, ask for Inspector Seminara, and tell him the whole story.”

“Inspector Seminara? Why?”

“Because as of this moment he’s the one officially leading the investigation into the kidnapping. Our commissioner’s given us the boot.”

“Why?”

“Jeez, is that all you can say, why? I feel like I’m in a kindergarten! There may be any number of reasons. First of all, the guy doesn’t think I’m equal to the task. Second, Seminara is Calabrian.”

“So? What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Bonetti-Alderighi is firmly convinced that Calabrians are better equipped to understand kidnappings than other people. Don’t you remember he did the exact same thing a few years ago when that other girl was kidnapped?”

“You’re right.”

“Come on, stop making that face!”

“I’m really sorry we have to wash our hands of this, Chief. And if I may say so, I’m also pretty surprised you didn’t put up a fight and dig in.”

“Who ever said we’re not going to be working on the case anymore?”

Fazio gave him a baffled look.

“You did. If Inspector Seminara’s supposed to take over, obviously we’re—”

“So what? He’ll be handling it officially, and we’ll stay on the case without telling anyone.”

Fazio’s eyes sparkled with contentment.

“Anyway,” the inspector concluded, “I’m convinced that Seminara, who’s no fool, will end up asking us to work with him.”

And, indeed, less than fifteen minutes later:

“Ahh Chief! ’Ere’d be a ’Sspector Seminata onna line sez he’s a collie o’ yiz in Montelusa.”

“Ciao, Montalbano.”

“Ciao, Seminara.”

“Nice little hassle the commissioner’s thrown in my lap! Sorry, but I have to obey orders. Your man Fazio told me you guys’d already started moving on this. It would be a big help to me if you could tell me how far you’ve gone with it. As long as you’ve got no objections, of course.”

He talked like he was walking on eggshells, being well aware of the prickly character of his
collie
Montalbano.

“Come on over whenever you like.”

“How about tomorrow morning around ten?” Seminara asked, reassured.

“All right.”

“Oh, and listen: Fazio told me the girl’s family is really poor and you think the motive for the kidnapping was sexual.”

“We’re pretty sure of it, unfortunately.”

“So there’d be no point in putting a tap on the parents’ phone?”

“I really don’t think so.”

He went out to eat.

Despite the fact that Hizzoner the C’mishner had, as they say, taken him off the case, he felt neither angry nor disappointed. Maybe because Seminara was a solid person, conscientious and stubborn. A good hunting dog who would certainly confront Ninetta’s kidnapping head-on.

And the most important thing was to free the girl as quickly as possible, if she was still alive. But he was having rather grave doubts that Ninetta was indeed still alive.

As soon as he sat down at the usual table, Enzo came up to him with an envelope in his hand.

“This came for you about ten minutes ago.”

Well, well! He’d gotten in touch! It was the usual envelope addressed to him, with the words
Treasure Hunt
.

“Who brought it?”

“A little kid who ran away as soon as he delivered it.”

The exact same method as when the package with the lamb’s head was delivered. Probably a child picked off the street, given the envelope or parcel, told where to take it, awarded a euro for a tip, with the recommendation to run away as soon as he’s made the delivery. Try and find him!

He stuck the envelope in his jacket pocket. His challenger could wait. The guy was taking his time, so the inspector could do the same.

“What have you got for me?”

“Whatever you want.”

“Well, I want everything.”

“Got a good appetite today?”

“Not really. But if I can just pick at a little of everything, in the end I will have eaten despite the fact that I’m not hungry.”

He ended up stuffing himself just the same. And for the first time in his life, he felt ashamed.

Then, while heading towards the jetty, he asked himself why he should feel ashamed for overeating.

It was, of course, specifically because of Ninetta’s kidnapping. What? The wretched girl, at that very moment, is being subjected to God knows what sorts of torments at the hands of a captor taking brutal advantage of her, and the inspector on the case, the man who’s supposed to liberate her, goes and gorges himself to his heart’s content, not giving a flying fuck about her and her predicament?

Wait a minute, Montalbà, don’t start spouting bullshit. Take, for example, a case where some of the rescue workers trying to help someone buried under the rubble of a house after an earthquake, who hasn’t had a bite to eat or a drop to drink for three days, decide, out of solidarity and compassion for the victim, not to eat or drink for three days. What happens? Well, after three days of privation, they no longer have the strength to rescue the guy buried under the rubble.

Ergo, the more they eat, the better shape they’re in for their rescue work.

Ergo, my ass
, said Montalbano Two.
It’s one thing to eat the right amount, and another thing to gorge yourself the way you do
.

Tell me the difference.

Eating is a duty, gorging yourself is a pleasure
.

You’re wrong there. Let me ask you a question. Why, in your opinion, do I eat so much?

Because you’re someone who can’t control himself.

Wrong. I could be hungry as a wolf, but if I’m caught up in a case I’m able to go whole days without eating. Therefore, when I have to, I can control myself.

Well, then you tell me why you eat so much.

I could reply that it has something to do with my metabolism, since by eating in this fashion I really should gain weight, and yet my weight stays always more or less the same, except when I’m doing nothing, which was the case until a few days ago. And I never even have liver trouble. The truth of the matter is something a friend once told me. Which was that for me, eating is a sort of accelerator of my brain function. Simple as that. So knock it off with all this shame and remorse.

He took his stroll out to the lighthouse very slowly, one foot up, the other foot down. Because, if there was no question but that food lubricated his brain, it was also true that it slowed down his pace.

When he reached the flat rock, he sat down and smoked a cigarette in peace.

Then he started pestering a crab, throwing little pebbles at it. At last he decided to take out the envelope, open it, and read what was inside.

I beg your pardon, dear policeman,

but your wait, you’ll see, does have its reason.

Day and night, my work and pleasure

is all to enrich your hunt for the treasure.

My next task truly makes me tremble:

to change real to real that it resemble.

Trust me: when you at last the answer reap,

real tears of joy your eyes will weep.

Await my next move; this you can handle,

for the game is worth more than the candle.

Huh? The prankster really could have spared himself the trouble of writing these lines, which hobbled worse than an unlucky cripple.

What, in essence, did they say?

That he had to wait because the guy was working hard to make the treasure better. Well, good luck.

There was probably no point in showing the poem to Arturo, so useless did it seem. Then he thought about it and decided that it wouldn’t be right. He’d promised the kid, who was supposed to be his teammate, and he had to make good on his promise and keep the kid informed of any new developments. But he didn’t feel like seeing him. The youth, with his Harry Potterish whiz-kid airs, was starting to get on his nerves. He reread the poem, and this time he began to get worried. There was something ugly in those lines. And what was he to make of that third couplet?

“Any sign of Inspector Augello?”

“Nossir, Chief.”

What the hell had happened to him?

“Any phone calls?”

“Jess one, Chief. ’At kid ’oo’s a frenna Signura Sciosciostrommi’s . . .”

What was little Master Arturo trying to do? Become a pain in the ass? A phone call a day? This time, however, the timing was right.

“Did he leave a phone number?”

“Yessir, sir.”

“Give him a ring and tell him to come here to the station to pick up an envelope I’ve got for him.”

He pulled it out of his pocket, handed it to Catarella, and went into his office.

He hadn’t even had time to sit down when a blast in the decibel range of a cherry bomb exploded behind him, making him leap forward to the point where he very nearly crashed his head against the wall.

“Beckin’ y’ partin’, Chief,” said Catarella in the doorway. “My ’and slipped.”

“You’d better watch out, Cat, ’cause one of these days my hand is gonna slip, too, and it’s not gonna be pretty for you.”

Catarella fell silent, staring at his shoe tops as if humiliated.

“What do you want?”

“Ya gotta ’scuse me, Chief, I tink ya got the wrong invilope,” he said, handing him the same envelope he’d given him moments before.

Montalbano took it and looked at it to make sure. It was in fact the one for the treasure hunt.

“Why do you think it’s the wrong one?”

“Insomuch as ’ere iss writ sayin’ as how the litter’s f’yiz, meanin’ yiz, Isspecter Salvo Montalbano, meanin’ yiz poissonally in poisson.”

“So what?”

“If isstead iss from yiz, sint by yiz, I mean ’at y’wannit a sind it on yer bahaff to him, then i’oughter had writ on it ’at iss addrissed to the kid ’at Signura Sciosciostrommi sint t’yiz.”

What to do? Grab him and smash his head against the wall? Or else suck it up and be patient? It was better not to spill any blood.

“You’re right, Cat. The letter’s addressed to me, but I want the kid to read it too.”

Catarella’s doubtful face cheered up. As he headed for the door, Montalbano looked down at a sheet of paper, but then noticed that Catarella had stopped in the doorway.

“Did your batteries go dead, Cat?”

“Wha’ ba’aries, Chief?”

“Never mind. What’s wrong?”

“I jess tought a sum’n. C’n I ass anutter quession?”

“Go ahead.”

“If the kid wantsa talk t’yiz, whaddo I do? Put ’im true or no?”

“I don’t feel like talking to him. Tell him I’m in a meeting.”

Augello showed up as it was getting dark.

“You really took your time, Mimì.”

“I did not take my time,” Mimì retorted, sitting down. “I wasted the whole day chasing down Alba.”

“And who’s that?”

“Alba Giordano. Professionally she goes by Samantha. The girl from the brothel.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“Yes, but the whole thing was incredibly long and drawn out. When I got to the address I had for her in Vincinzella, I knocked and knocked but nobody answered. Then a neighbor lady said that the Giordanos had moved to Ragona a couple of weeks ago. And since they’d given her the new address, I headed off to Ragona. I located the house, but then I had a problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“What was I supposed to do? Introduce myself to her mother and father?”

“Wasn’t that the most logical thing?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“What if they didn’t know the first thing about what their daughter was doing with her free time?”

“But hadn’t Alba been identified? Is it possible her parents knew nothing about it?”

“And what if the father knew and the mother didn’t? Or vice versa? I would have created a big mess.”

“Your scruples do you honor, Inspector Augello. Your profound humanity, your exquisite sensitivity—”

“Fuck off.”

“So what did you do?”

“I went to the carabinieri.”

Montalbano balked and goggled his eyes. He literally leapt up in his chair.

“The carabinieri? Are you crazy?”

“No. Why, have they got the mange or something?”

“That’s not what I meant, but—”

“Salvo, I had nowhere else to go. There wasn’t any local police station. I thought about it a long time before going to them.”

“And did you tell them who you were?”

“Of course.”

“And wha’d they do?”

“What do you think? That they kicked me out? The marshal was extremely polite and put himself entirely at my disposal. And you know what? The guy’s got a mind just like Fazio’s. He knows everything about every inhabitant of Ragona from cradle to grave.”

“So wha’d you tell him?”

“The truth.”

“What part?”

Mimì looked puzzled.

“I don’t understand.”

“Did you tell him the whole truth, from the very beginning, or did you only sing half the Mass?”

“I still don’t understand.”

“I’ll speak more clearly. Did you tell this marshal of the carabinieri—now pay close attention—that you first saw Alba in a photo album at a ‘house of assignation’ where you’d gone as a client?”

Mimì first turned bright red, then pale as a corpse. He was about to get up and leave without a word, but then managed to control himself. He swallowed two or three times, ran a hand over his lips, and then said in a slightly quavering voice:

“No, I didn’t think it was important.”

“Why not?”

“Because it had nothing to do with what I had to ask him.”

“It didn’t?”

“No, it didn’t.”

“Tell me something. Did the marshal tell you how Alba behaves when she’s in Ragona?”

“Yes, he said her conduct is irreproachable.”

“And did you tell him that in fact she occasionally works as a prostitute?”

“I couldn’t help but do so.”

“And how’d he react?”

“He was very surprised.”

“Only surprised?”

“He said that from now on he would keep an eye on her.”

“All right. This is where I wanted to take you. The honest public servant of the police didn’t hesitate to let the carabinieri know that Alba had worked as a prostitute, neglecting, however, to say that he himself had wanted to be a client of hers. That’s all. You were able to leave looking as clean as when you arrived, whereas she’s now branded as a whore.”

“But it was you yourself who gave me the assignment to go and look for her, to make her talk and—”

“The assignment I gave you was to go and meet with her alone, without involving anyone else. In fact I even asked you to resort to your well-known arts as a seducer. And this, indirectly, meant that you shouldn’t involve the carabinieri, the customs police, or the forest rangers.”