The Potter's Field

confirming his intuition.”

“All right, but it amounts to the same thing: Why didn’t you seek out this confirmation?”

“Shit . . . is not something . . . I touch with my hands,” the old man said with difficulty.

Guttadauro the lawyer translated this for him.

“Don Balduccio felt that it was a matter for the law to handle.”

“So I was supposed to pick up the shit with my own hands?”

Guttadauro shrugged.

“It’s what we were hoping. However, at that point, you stepped back and put your deputy into the mix,” he said.

“Who is making . . . big . . . mistake,” the old man chimed in.

“But we can’t let him continue in his mistake for very long,” the lawyer said by way of conclusion.

“I’m very tired,” said Don Balduccio, closing his eyes.

Montalbano stood up and left the room, followed by Guttadauro.

“I didn’t like your last statement one bit,” the inspector said harshly.

“I didn’t either, having said it,” the lawyer replied. “But don’t take it as a threat. Don Balduccio doesn’t know yet, because I asked that he not be told. But I know.”

“Know what?”

“That your deputy and Dolores have been . . . well, let’s say ‘meeting.’ It is in everyone’s best interests that this affair end as soon as possible.”

He showed him to the car, opened the door for him, closed it when Montalbano got in, and bowed when the car drove off.

It was late, but the inspector didn’t feel the least bit like sleeping. He had a lot of thinking to do. Going into the kitchen, he prepared the usual six-cup pot of coffee. So Guttadauro knew about Dolores and Mimi. And the lawyer had given him a sort of deadline that was no joking matter. How would Balduccio react if he found out about the love affair between his adoptive daughter-in-law and the deputy inspector who was investigating him? Badly, no doubt. Because he would be convinced that Mimi was working in Dolores’s favor. He would never believe that Mimi was acting in good faith. And the whole thing might take a dangerous turn. The coffee bubbled up. Montalbano poured himself a mugful and sipped it slowly. Sitting out on the veranda was out of the question, as it was too cold, and so he sat down at the small diningroom table, paper and pen within reach. So what, in essence, had Balduccio told him? First of all, the old man had made a genuine confession to him—namely, that it was he who had Filippo Alfano killed in Colombia, convinced that Alfano had betrayed him. He had put himself in Montalbano’s hands by admitting to the murder. But surely Balduccio had made that confession for a second purpose. What? The inspector wrote:

Find out when and how Filippo Alfano was murdered. Have Catarella do a search.

Second—and this was very important—the old man had told him that, realizing his mistake, he had taken it upon himself to care for Giovanni, Filippo’s son, supporting his studies and making sure the boy lived “a clean life.” In other words, he had kept him out of Mafia circles. Therefore Giovanni had not been a courier. This was one of the reasons Balduccio had wanted to meet with the inspector: to tell him this in person. It bothered the old gangster to see Giovanni’s memory tarnished. But then what did those traces of cocaine in the shoebox mean? The coke couldn’t have been for personal use, since Giovanni’s friends maintained he never took any. Maybe Dolores liked a snort now and then. Then there was what Don Balduccio left unsaid. He never once uttered the name of his daughter-in-law Dolores. And this surely meant something. The silences of mafiosi often say much more than words could ever do. Another point: Balduccio was convinced that Giovanni couldn’t deliver the letter because he had never crossed the strait. In his opinion, he had gone no farther than Catania. But how could he claim this, when the blood in the sink proved that Giovanni had been in Gioia Tauro? Last point: Balduccio, in judging the whole matter to be “shit” and declaring his unwillingness to concern himself with it, was leaving it up to the law for a precise (but undeclared) purpose. (In the mouths of mafiosi, the real purpose is always hidden behind another apparent, but false, primary purpose.) Balduccio wanted those responsible for Giovanni’s murder to end up in prison after a public trial that would expose their filth and ferocity to everyone. If he had taken matters into his own hands, the culprits would, of course, have paid for their actions, but they would have quietly disappeared, killed by lupara bianca. He was, in short, using the law as a refined form of vendetta: public disgrace.

In conclusion, Balduccio was certain that Giovanni had been killed the moment he learned that the letter had never been delivered. That failure spoke more clearly to him than any hard evidence. Because, if one thought about it, the whole story was full of objects either absent or present. A hand-delivered letter that never arrives. A bouquet of roses that by evening hasn’t been picked up, but which is gone the following morning. The dust that shouldn’t have been there, on the little table in the entrance. A garbage bin that should have contained the remains of a meal but was empty. An unpaid electric bill. A bloody syringe . . .

Wait a minute, Montalbano! Stop right there!

The garbage bin at Via Gerace was made of plastic! Positive ? Positive. And if it was plastic, it couldn’t have a rusted bottom. What a collossal moron! What he’d seen wasn’t rust, but dried blood! Blood that had leaked out of the syringe when it was thrown into the bin!

Phone Esterina Trippodo in the morning.

He now understood the next moves he had to make. He kept writing.

Call up Macannuco, bring him up to speed on everything, suggest to him what needs to be done.

As soon as he finished this sentence, he felt a little tired. Tired but satisfied. And he was sure that, if he lay down, he would fall immediately asleep.

He was woken up by a noise in the kitchen. He looked at the clock: nine-thirty. Matre santa, it was late!

“Adelina!”

“Wha’d I do, ’Spector, d’I wake a you up? You’s asleepin’ like an angel!”