Sinagras had bought up the entire hill, but for another, subtler reason.
Despite the fact that the land on Ciuccafa had been declared suitable for building by the new development plan some time ago, the landowners, a lawyer named Sidoti and the Marchese Lauricella, did not dare, though both short of cash, to lot and sell the land, for fear of gravely offending Don Balduccio, who had indeed summoned them and, through metaphors, proverbs, and anecdotes, had given them to understand that the presence of outsiders would be an unbearable nuisance to him. As a precaution against any dangerous misunderstandings, the lawyer Sidoti, who owned the land on which the road had been built, had also staunchly refused to be compensated for the unwanted expropriation. Indeed, in town there were malicious whispers that the two landowners had agreed to share the damages fifty-fifty The lawyer gave up the land, while the marchese graciously made a gift of the road to Don Balduccio, shouldering the costs of the labor. The gossips also said that whenever, due to bad weather, any potholes or bumps appeared in the road surface, Don Balduccio would complain to the marchese, and, in the twinkling of an eye, pockets ever at the ready, the latter would see to it that the road was again smooth as a billiards table.
For some three years now, things weren’t going so well for either the Sinagras or the Cuffaros, the two families fighting for control of the Province.
Masino Sinagra, Don Balduccio’s sixty-year-old first-born, had finally been arrested and sent to jail under a pile of indictments so vast that, even if, during trial preparations, it had been decided in Rome to abolish life sentences, the legislature would have had to make an exception for him, reinstating it for this one case. Japichinu, son of Masino and beloved grandson of Don Balduccio, a boyish thirty-year-old endowed by nature with a face so sweet and honest that retirees would have trusted him with their life savings, was forced to go into hiding, pursued by a slew of arrest warrants. Bewildered and disturbed by this utterly unprecedented offensive on the part of justice after decades of somnolent languor, Don Balduccio, who’d felt rejuvenated by a good thirty years upon hearing of the murder of two of the island’s most valiant magistrates, had plummeted back into the throes of old age when he learned that the new chief prosecutor was the worst thing possible: Piedmontese, and with a whiff of communism about him. One day, when watching the evening news, he’d seen the new magistrate kneeling in church.
“What’s he doing, going to Mass?” he had asked in dismay.
“Yessir, the man’s religious,” someone had explained.
“Wha‘? Didn’t the priests teach him nuthin’?”
Don Balduccio’s younger son, ‘Ngilino, had gone completely mad, and began speaking an incomprehensible tongue that he claimed was Arabic. And from that moment on, he’d begun dressing like an Arab as well, so that in town he became known as “the sheikh.” The sheikh’s two sons spent more time abroad than in Vigata. Pino, known as the “reconciler” for the diplomatic skill he was able to summon up at difficult moments, was constantly traveling back and forth between Canada and the United States. Caluzzo, on the other hand, spent eight months of the year in Bogota. The burden of conducting the family’s business had therefore fallen back onto the shoulders of the patriarch, who was now being lent a hand by a cousin, Saro Magistro. It was ru mored that this Magistro, after killing one of the Cuffaros, had eaten the man’s liver, roasted on a spit.
As for the Cuffaros, it could not be said things were going any better for them. One Sunday morning two years ago, the ultraoctogenarian head of the family, Don Sisino Cuffaro, got in his car to attend Holy Mass, as he was devoutly and unfailingly in the habit of doing. At the wheel was his youngest son, Birtino. When the latter turned on the ignition, there was a terrible blast that shattered windows up to five kilometers away. One Arturo Spampinato, accountant, who had nothing whatsoever to do with any of this, thinking a frightful earthquake was taking place, threw himself out of a sixth-floor window, smashing himself to bits. All that was found of Don Sisino were his left arm and right foot; of Birtino, only four charred bones.
The Cuffaros did not hold this against the Sinagras, as everyone in town had expected. The Cuffaros as well as the Sinagras knew that the deadly bomb had been put in the car by some third party, elements of an emergent new Mafia, ambitious young punks with no respect and ready to do anything, who’d got it in their heads to fuck over the two historic families and take their place. And there was an explanation for this. If the narcotics road had always been rather wide, it had now become a six-lane superhighway. One therefore needed young, determined manpower with good hands and the ability to use Kalashnikovs and computers with equal skill.
All these things were going through the inspector’s head as he drove to Ciuccafa. A tragicomic scene he’d witnessed on television also came back to him. In it, some guy from the Anti-Mafia Commission who’d arrived in Fela after the tenth murder in a single week was dramatically ripping up his own clothes while asking in a strangled voice:
“Where is the state?”
Meanwhile the handful of carabinieri, four policemen, two coast guard agents, and three assistant prosecutors who represented the state in Fela, risking their own skin each day, looked at him in amazement. The distinguished anti-Mafia commissioner was apparently suffering a memory lapse. He had forgotten that he, at least in part, was the state. And if things were what they were, it was he, along with others, who made them what they were.
At the very bottom of the hill, where the solitary paved road leading to Don Balduccio’s house began, stood a one-story cottage. As Montalbano’s car drew near, a man appeared at one of the two windows. He eyed the car and brought a cell phone to his ear. Those in charge had been alerted.
On either side of the road were electrical and telephone poles, and every hundred and fifty yards or so there was an open space, a kind of rest area. Without fail, in each rest area, there was a person, now inside a car, plumbing the depths of his nose with his finger, now standing and counting the crows overhead, now pretending to fix a motor scooter. Sentinals. There were no weapons anywhere to be seen, but the inspector knew full well that, should the need arise, they would promptly appear from behind a pile of rocks or a telephone pole.
The great cast-iron gate, sole opening in the high defense wall surrounding the house, was wide open. In front of it stood Guttadauro the lawyer, bright smile slicing across his face, bowing frantically.
“Go straight, then immediately turn right. There you’ll find the parking lot.”
In the parking area were some ten cars of every kind, from luxury to economy models. Montalbano stopped and got out, as Guttadauro came running up, breathless.
“I never once doubted your sensibility, understanding, and intelligence! Don Balduccio will be most pleased! Come, Inspector, I’ll show you in.”
The start of the entrance lane was marked by two giant monkey puzzle trees. Under each tree, on either side,
