“I understand. As far as you know, has Giovanni ever used cocaine?”
Michele Tripodi started laughing. A hearty, full-bellied laugh.
“Are you kidding? Giovanni hates drugs of any kind! He doesn’t even smoke! And he even made Dolores give it up! Remember how his father was killed? Well, that fact marked him for life, and he has behaved accordingly.”
“I’m sorry, but I have another delicate question to ask you. It’s about Dolores. It seems there are two conflicting opinions about her in town.”
“Inspector, Dolores is a beautiful woman who is forced to remain alone too often and for too long. And perhaps she’s a bit too impulsive, and a bit too expansive, and this can sometimes give rise to misunderstandings.”
“Tell me one.”
“One what?”
“Give me an example of one such misunderstanding.”
“Well, I don’t know . . . After she’d been in Vigata for about a year, a boy, an eighteen-year-old from a good family, started serenading her, literally singing serenades to her, and then started harassing her on the phone, and one time even tried to enter her apartment . . . Dolores had to call the carabinieri . . .”
“Only eighteen-year-olds? No adults?”
“Well, about two years ago there was a more serious episode where a butcher lost his head over her . . . doing ridiculous things like sending her a bouquet of roses every day . . . Eventually he had to move to Catania, and poor Dolores’s persecutions ended there, fortunately.”
Montalbano laughed.
“Yes, I’d heard that story of the love-smitten butcher before . . . His name was Pecorella, if I’m not mistaken...”
“No, Pecorini,” Tripodi corrected him.
Was it important to know that the butcher who rented his house to Mimi for his amorous trysts had also fallen in love with Dolores Alfano two years before? At first glance, it appeared not. But there was another question that had come into the inspector’s head the moment Tripodi had told him the story of the butcher. Tripodi said that to rid herself of the boy who was bothering her, Dolores had called the carabinieri. But he didn’t say what action Dolores had taken in the butcher’s case. She certainly hadn’t asked the carabinieri for help on that occasion. The butcher, however, had resolved the problem by moving to Catania. And this was where the question arose: Why, from one day to the next, had he moved away from Vigata if he was so in love with Dolores? What could have happened to him?
“Fazio! Into my office, quick! Fazio!”
“What is it, Chief?”
“You remember Pecorini?”
“The butcher? Yes.”
“I want to know, by tomorrow morning at the latest, why he left Vigata two years ago and opened a butcher shop in Catania.”
“All right, Chief. But what did this Pecorini do, sell meat with mad cow disease or something?”
It was now late, and the inspector felt mighty hungry. Just as he was standing up, the telephone decided to ring. He hesitated a moment, wondering whether or not he should answer, but a goddamned sense of duty got the better of him.
“Chief ! Ahh Chief! That’d be Mr. Giacchetta.”
The inspector remembered that Giacchetti had asked for him.
“Show him in.”
“I can’t, Chief, seeing as how he’s in telephonic communication.”
“Then put him through.”
“Inspector Montalbano? This is Fabio Giacchetti, the bank manager who . . . Do you remember me?”
“Of course I remember you. How are your wife and child?”
“Very well, thanks.”
And Giacchetti stopped talking.
“So?” the inspector prodded him.
“Well, now that I’m on the phone and talking to you, I’m not sure if I really ought to...”
Geez, what a pain! The inspector also remembered that the bank manager was someone who was always taking one step forward, two steps back, a ditherer born and bred, an expert in the art of shilly-shallying. He didn’t feel like wasting any more time.
“Let me be the judge of whether you ought to or not. What did you want to tell me?”
“But it may be something of no importance...”
“Listen, Mr. Giacchetta—”
“Giacchetti. All right, I’ll tell you, even though it’s not . . . Well, I saw the car again, I’m sure of it.”
“What car?”
“The one that tried to run the woman over... Remember?”
“Yes. You’ve seen it again?”
