The Potter's Field (5 page)

He went to bed feeling fed up with all of creation. But before lying down he took an aspirin, cursing the saints all the while. Given the soaking he'd endured that morning and his wretchedly advancing age, perhaps it was best to be cautious.

The following morning, after awaking from a night of rather agitated sleep and opening the window, the inspector rejoiced. A July sun shone in a sky scrubbed perfectly clean and sparkling. The sea, which for two days had completely covered the beach, had receded, but had left the sand littered with garbage bags, empty cans, plastic bottles, bottomless boxes, and various other filth. Montalbano recalled how in now distant times, when the sea withdrew, it would leave behind only sweet-smelling algae and beautiful shells that were like gifts to mankind. Now it only gave us back our own rubbish.

He also remembered a comedy he had read in his youth, called
The Deluge
, which claimed that the next great flood would be caused not by water from the heavens, but by the backing up and overflowing of all the toilets, latrines, cesspools, and septic tanks in the world, which would start chucking up their contents relentlessly until we all drowned in our own shit.

He went out on the veranda and stepped down onto the beach.

He noticed that the space between the cement slab holding up the veranda's tiled floor and the sand below had become clogged with a fine assortment of smelly debris, including the carcass of a dog.

Cursing like a madman, he went back inside, slipped on a pair of dishwashing gloves, grabbed a sort of grapple that Adelina used for mysterious purposes, went down to the beach again, threw himself belly-down on the sand, and started cleaning up.

After fifteen minutes of this, a sharp pang seized him across the shoulders, paralyzing him. Why on earth was he undertaking such tasks at his age?

“Could I really be in such bad shape?” he wondered.

In a fit of pride, however, he went back to work, the pain be damned. When he had finished putting all the rubbish into two large garbage bags, every bone in his body ached. But he'd had an idea in the meantime, and he wanted to see it through. He went inside and wrote in block letters on a blank sheet of paper: ASSHOLE. He put this in one of the two bags, which he then picked up and put into the trunk of his car. He went back into the house, took a shower, got dressed, got into his car, and drove off.

Just outside a town called Rattusa, he spotted a telephone booth that miraculously worked. He pulled up, got out of the car, and dialed a number.

“Is this Pippo Ragonese, the newsman?”

“In person. Who is this?”

“The name's Russo, Luicino Russo. I'm a hunter,” said Montalbano, changing his voice.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Russo?”

“Iss happened again,” said the inspector in a conspiratorial tone of voice.

“I'm sorry, what's happened again?”

“That satanic stuff you talked about lass night on TV. I foun' two more bags.”

“Really?” asked Ragonese, immediately interested. “Where did you find them?”

“Right here,” said Montalbano, playing dumb.

“Here where?”

“Right here where I am.”

“Yes, but where are you?”

“In Spiranzella district, right by the four big olive trees.”

That is, about thirty miles from the newsman's house.

“Wha' should I do? Call the police?” asked Montalbano.

“No, there's no need, we can do that together. You stay put for the moment. I'll be there straightaway. And don't tell anyone else, please, it's very important.”

“You comin' alone?”

“No, I'll bring a cameraman as well.”

“Will he take me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Will he take my pitcher? Will I be on TV? So all my friends'll see me an' I can brag about it?”

He got back into the car, drove to Spiranzella, left the two bags under one of the four olive trees, and drove off.

Entering the station, he found Catarella at his post.

“But didn't you have a fever?”

“I got rid of it, Chief.”

“How'd you do that?”

“Took four aspirins an' then drunk a glass o' hot spicy wine an' then got in bed an' covered m'self up. An' now iss gone.”

“Who's here?”

“Fazio in't here yet, an' Isspector Augello called sayin' as how he still had a little fever but would come in later in the morning.”

“Any news?”

“There's a ginnelman wants a talk to yiz who's name is—wait, I got it writ down somewheres—iss an easy name but I forgot it, wait, here it is: Mr. Giacchetta.”

“Does that seem like a forgettable name to you?”

“It happens to me sometimes, Chief.”

“All right, then, send him into my office after I go in.”

The man who came in was a well-dressed gentleman of about forty with a distinguished air, perfectly coiffed hair, mustache, eyeglasses, and the overall look of an ideal bank clerk.

“Please sit down, Mr. Giacchetta.”

“Giacchetti. Fabio Giacchetti's the name.”

Montalbano cursed to himself. Why did he still believe the names Catarella passed on to him?

“What can I do for you, Mr. Giacchetti?”

The man sat down, carefully arranging the creases in his trousers and smoothing his mustache. He leaned back in his chair and looked at the inspector.

“Well?” said Montalbano.

“The truth of the matter is, I'm not sure I was right to come here.”

O matre santa!
He'd happened upon a ditherer, a doubting Thomas, the worst kind of person who might ever walk into a police station.

“Listen, I can't help you with that. It's up to you to decide. It's not like I can give you little hints the way they do on quiz shows.”

“Well, the fact is that last night I witnessed something . . . and that's just it, I don't know what it was . . . something I really don't know how to define.”

“If you decide to tell me what it was, perhaps together we can arrive at a definition,” said Montalbano, who was beginning to feel something breaking in the general area of his balls. “If, on the other hand, you don't tell me, then I'll have to send you on your way.”

“Well, at the time, it seemed to me . . . at first, that is, it looked to me like a hit-and-run driver. You know what I mean, don't you?”

“Yes. Or at least I can tell a hit-and-run driver from a hit-and-run lover—you know, the kind with bedroom eyes and a little black book. Listen, Mr. Giacchetti, I haven't got much time to waste. Let's start at the beginning, all right? I'll ask you a few questions, just to warm you up, so to speak.”

“Okay.”

“Are you from here?”

“No, I'm from Rome.”

“And what do you do here in Vigàta?”

“I started three months ago as manager of the branch office of the Banco Cooperativo.”

The inspector had been right on the money. The man could only be with a bank. You can tell right away: Those who handle other people's money in the cathedrals of wealth that are the big banks end up acquiring something austere and reserved in their manner, something priestlike proper to those who practice secret rites such as laundering dirty money, engaging in legalized usury, using coded accounts, and illegally exporting capital offshore. They suffer, in short, from the same sorts of occupational deformities as undertakers, who, in handling corpses every day, end up looking like walking corpses themselves.

“Where do you live?”

“For now, while waiting to find a decent apartment, my wife and I are staying at a house on the Montereale road, as her parents' guests. It's their country home, but they've turned it over to us for the time being.”

“All right, then, if you'd be so kind as to tell me what happened . . .”

“Last night, around two A.M., my wife started going into labor, and so I put her in the car and we headed off to Montelusa Hospital.”

The man was finally opening up.

“Just as we were leaving Vigàta, I noticed, in the headlights, a woman walking ahead of me, with her back to me. At that exact moment a car came up beside me at a high speed, lightly swiping my car as it passed—it looked to me like it was swerving—and then it aimed straight for the woman. She quickly realized the danger, probably hearing the car's engine, and jumped to her right and fell into the ditch. The car stopped for a second and then took off again with a screech.”

“So, in the end it didn't hit her?”

“No. The woman was able to dodge it.”

“And what did you do?”

“I stopped, though my wife was crying—she was feeling very bad by this point—and I got out. The woman had got back up in the meantime. I asked her if she was hurt and she said no. So I told her to get in the car and I would take her into town, and she accepted. On the way, we all agreed that the person driving that car must have had a bit too much to drink, and that it must have been some sort of stupid prank. Then she told me where she wanted to be dropped off, and she got out of the car. Before she left, however, she begged me not to tell anyone about what I had seen. She gave me to understand that she was returning from an amorous encounter...”

“She didn't explain how she happened to be out alone at that hour of the night?”

“She made some reference . . . she said her car had stalled and wouldn't start up again. But then she realized she had run out of gas.”

“So, how did things work out?”

Fabio Giacchetti looked confused.

“With the lady?”

“No, with your wife.”

“I don't . . . I don't understand...”

“Did you become a father or not?”

Fabio Giacchetti lit up.

“Yes. A boy.”

“Congratulations. Tell me something: How old do you think the woman was?”

Fabio Giacchetti smiled.

“About thirty, Inspector. Tall, dark, and very attractive. Clearly upset, but very attractive.”

“Where did she get out?”

“At the corner of Via Serpotta and Via Guttuso.”

“So you've learned the names of all the streets in Vigàta after only three months?”

Fabio Giacchetti blushed.

“No . . . it's just that . . . when the lady got out . . . I looked at the names of the streets.”

“Why?”

Fabio Giacchetti blazed red.

“Well, you know . . . instinctively...”

Instinctively indeed! Fabio Giacchetti had looked for the street names because the woman appealed to him and he would have liked to meet her again. A devoted husband, happy father, and potential adulterer.