The Potter's Field

I’VE GOT THAT SYRINGE YOU KNOW ABOUT. GUESS WHO I AM AND GET IN TOUCH, AND WE CAN MAKE A DEAL.

“Matre santa!” said Adelina. “Tha’ss a long writing!”

“Take your time. I’m going into the bathroom.”

He stayed in there for almost an hour, purposely taking things slow. And, in fact, when he came out, Adelina had just finished.

“I’m all asweaty, signore. Jeez, ’at was hard! Whaddya wan’ me a do, sign it?”

“No, Adeli, it’s an anonymous letter!”

Adelina looked at him with surprise.

“Wha? You’s a man o’ the law, sir, an’ you mekka me write a ’nonymous letter?”

“You know what Machiavelli said?”

“No, sir, I don’ know ’im. Wha’d ’e say?”

“He said the end justifies the means.”

“I don’ unnastann, I think I go becka the kitchen.”

I GOTTA SYRINCE YOU KNOW ABOUT. GESS WHO I AM AND GET IN TUCH, AND WE MAKE A DEEL.

It was perfect. He took an envelope, put the anonymous letter inside, and sealed it. Then he wrote a short note.

Dear Macannuco,

I want you to send the attached letter by express mail from Gioia Tauro to the following address: Dolores Alfano, Via Guttuso 12, Vigata.

Thanks,

Salvo

He inserted the note and letter into a bigger envelope, wrote Macannuco’s address on this, and put it in his jacket pocket.

“Goodbye, Adeli, I’m going out.”

“Whaddya wan’ me a make a you to eat?”

“Whatever you want. After all, everything you make is good.”

He stopped at the first tobacco shop he passed, bought a pack of cigarettes and a priority-mail stamp, pasted this on the envelope, and put it in a mailbox, hoping the postal service wouldn’t take eight days, as it usually did, to deliver a letter over a distance of a hundred and twenty miles.

Catarella was so engrossed at the computer that he didn’t even notice when Montalbano came in. In the corridor the inspector nearly collided with Fazio.

“Come into my office and close the door,” he said. “So?”

“I was right, Chief. Filippo Alfano’s murder was reported by the Giornale dell’Isola. He was killed on February the second, twenty-three years ago, at least that’s the date the records office gives for his death.”

“And the upshot?”

“The upshot, for now, is that Catarella has accessed the magazine’s archives.”

“Let’s hope for the best. Any news of Mimi?”

“He’s not back yet.”

“All right, thanks.”

But Fazio didn’t budge.

“Chief, what’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“First you turn the investigation over to Augello and now you’re conducting a parallel investigation on your own.”

“But I’m not conducting any parallel investigation! I just got an idea that I thought might be useful. Or should I forbid myself to think just because I turned the investigation over to Mimi?”

Fazio seemed unconvinced.

“Chief, I still can’t get it through my head that it was just a coincidence that you asked me about Dolores Alfano before the woman came here to tell us about her husband . . . And I can’t stop thinking about the fact that you asked me about Pecorini before we knew he was involved with Dolores. Don’t you think it’s time you told me how things really stand?”

What a damn good cop Fazio was! Montalbano weighed his options and arrived at the conclusion that the best course was to tell Fazio part of the truth.

“If I asked you about Dolores and Pecorini, it wasn’t because of the murder of Giovanni Alfano, but for another reason.”

“What’s the reason?”

“I’d found out that Mimi has been carrying on, for over two months, with another woman.”