Excursion to Tindari

business. Now I say, Mr. Inspector, these excursions are nice when everybody stays together.You joke, you laugh, you sing songs. But if—”

“Are you sure you never met the Griffos?”

“Where wouldIamet ‘em?”

“I dunno, at the market, the tobacco shop ...”

“My wife does the shopping an’ I don’t smoke. On the other hand ...”

“On the other hand?”

“I used to know a guy named Pietro Giffo. Mighta been a relative, only the r was missing. This Giffo was a traveling salesman, the kind of guy who liked a good joke. One time—”

“Did you by any chance run into the Griffos at any time during the day you spent in Tindari?”

“Me and the wife, we never see anyone from the group when we get to where we’re going. We go to Palermo? I got a brother-in-law there. We go down to Erice? I got a cousin lives there. They roll out the red carpet, invite us to lunch. And Tindari, forget about it! I got a nephew there, Filippo, he come to pick us up at the bus stop, took us to his house, and his wife served us a sfincione for the first course, and for the second —”

“When the driver called roll for the return home, were the Griffos present?”

“Yessir, I heard ‘em answer.”

“Did you notice if they got off the bus at any of the three extra stops the bus made on the way back?”

“I was just telling you, Inspector, what my nephew Filippo gave us to eat. Well, we couldn’t even get up out of our seats, that’s how stuffed we were! On the way back, when we stopped for caffellatte like we planned, I didn’t even want to get off the bus. But then the wife reminded me it was all paid for anyways. What we gonna do, waste our money? So I just had a little spot of milk with two cookies. And immediately I start to feel sleepy. Always happens to me after I eat. Anyways, I nodded off. And it’s a good thing I didn’t have any coffee! ‘Cause, lemme tell you, when I drink coffee—”

“—You can never get to sleep. Once you got back to Vigata, did you see the Griffos get off the bus?”

“Dear Inspector, at that hour, dark as it was, with me practically not knowing if.my own wife was gettin’ off the bus!”

“Do you remember where you sat?”

“That I do, I remember where we was sittin‘, the wife and me. Right in the middle of the bus. In front of us was the Bufalottas, behind us was the Raccuglias, and beside us the Persicos. We already knew all of them, it was our fifth tour together. The Bufalottas, poor things, they need to take their mind off their troubles. Their oldest boy, Pippino, died when—”

“Do you remember where the Griffos were seated?”

“In the last row, I think.”

“The one with five seats in a row, without armrests?”

“I think so.”

“Good. That’s all, Mr. Zotta, you can go now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we’re done. You can go home.”

“What? What the hell is this anyway? You trouble a seventy-seven-year-old man and a seventy-five-year-old woman for this kind of bullshit? We got up at six in the morning for this! You think that’s right?”

,When the last of the old folks had left it was nearly one o‘clock, and the police station looked as if it had been the site of a very crowded picnic. Granted, there was no grass in the office, but where are you going to find grass nowadays? That stuff that still manages to grow on the outskirts of town, you call that grass? Four stunted, half- yellowed blades where, if you stick your hand in there, chances are ninety-nine out of a hundred you’ll get pricked by a hidden syringe?

With these fine thoughts, a bad mood was descending again on the inspector when he realized that Catarella, assigned cleanup duty, had come to a sudden halt, broom in one hand and something not clearly identifiable in the other.

“My, my, my! Wouldja look at that!” Catarella muttered, flabbergasted as he eyed what he’d picked up off the floor.

“What is it?”

All at once Catarella’s face turned a flaming red.

“A profellattict, Chief!”

“Used?!” the inspector asked, astonished.

“No, Chief, still in its wrapper.”

There: that was the only difference from the trash left behind at a real picnic. As for everything else, the same depressing filth, tissue paper, cigarette butts, cans of Coca-Cola and orangeade, bottles of mineral water, pieces of bread and cookies, even an ice-cream cone slowly melting in a corner.

As Montalbano had already tabulated from an initial comparison of the answers given to him, Fazio, and Galluzzo—and this, no doubt, was another, if not the main reason for his foul mood—it turned out that they knew