“A couple of garbage collectors in the Pasture.
They found him in a car.”
“I’ll be right there. Meanwhile phone the Montelusa department, have them send someone from the lab, and inform Judge Lo Bianco.”
~
As he stood under the shower, he reached the conclusion that the dead man must have been a member of the Cuffaro gang. Eight months earlier, probably due to some territorial dispute, a ferocious war had broken out between the Vigata Cuffaros and the Sinagra gang, who were from Fela. One victim per month, by turns, and in orderly fashion: one in Vigata, one in Fela. The latest, a certain Mario Salino, had been shot in Fela by the Vigatese, so now it was apparently the turn of one of the Cuffaro thugs.
Before going out—he lived alone in a small house right on the beach on the opposite side of town from the Pasture—he felt like calling Livia in Genoa. She answered immediately, drowsy with sleep.
“Sorry, but I wanted to hear your voice.”
“I was dreaming of you,” she said. “You were here with me.”
Montalbano was about to say that he, too, had been dreaming of her, but an absurd prudishness held him back. Instead he asked:
“And what were we doing?”
“Something we haven’t done for too long,” she said.
~
At headquarters, aside from the sergeant, there were only three policemen. The rest had gone to the home of a clothing-shop owner who had shot his sister over a question of inheritance and then escaped. Montalbano opened the door to the interrogation room. The two garbage collectors were sitting on the bench, huddling one against the other, pale despite the heat.
“Wait here till I get back,” Montalbano said to them, and the two, resigned, didn’t even reply. They both knew well that any time one fell in with the law, whatever the reason, it was going to be a long affair.
“Have any of you called the papers?” the inspector asked his men. They shook their heads no.
“Well, I don’t want them sticking their noses in this. Make a note of that.”
Timidly, Galluzzo came forward, raising two fingers as if to ask if he could go to the bathroom.
“Not even my brother-in-law?”
Galluzzo’s brother-in-law was a newsman with TeleVigata who covered local crime, and Montalbano imagined the family squabbles that might break out if Galluzzo weren’t to tell him anything. And Galluzzo was looking at him with pitiful, canine eyes.
“All right. But he should come only after the body’s been removed. And no photographers.”
They set out in a squad car, leaving Giallombardo behind on duty. Gallo was at the wheel. Together with Galluzzo, he was often the butt of facile jokes, such as
“Hey, Inspector, what’s new in the chicken coop?”
Knowing Gallo’s driving habits, Montalbano admonished him, “Don’t speed. We’re in no hurry.”
At the curve by the Carmelite church, Peppe Gallo could no longer restrain himself and accelerated, screeching the tires as he rounded the bend. They heard a loud crack, like a pistol shot, and the car skidded to a halt. They got out. The right rear tire hung flabbily, blown out. It had been well worked over by a sharp blade; the cuts were quite visible.
“Goddamn sons of bitches!” bellowed the sergeant.
Montalbano got angry in earnest.
“But you all know they cut our tires twice a month! Jesus! And every morning I remind you: don’t forget to check them before going out! But you assholes don’t give a shit! And you won’t until the day somebody breaks his neck!”
For one reason or another, it took a good ten minutes to change the tire, and when they got to the Pasture, the Montelusa crime lab team was already there. They were in what Montalbano called the meditative stage, that is, five or six agents circling round and round the spot where the car stood, hands usually in their pockets or behind their backs. They looked like philosophers absorbed in deep thought, but in fact their eyes were combing the ground for clues, traces, footprints. As soon as Jacomuzzi, head of the crime lab, saw Montalbano, he came running up.
“How come there aren’t any newsmen?”
“I didn’t want any.”
“Well, this time they’re going to accuse you of trying to cover up a big story.” He was clearly upset.
“Do you know who the dead man is?”
“No. Who?”
“None other than ‘the engineer,’ Silvio Luparello.”
“Shit!” was Montalbano’s only comment.
“And do you know how he died?”
“No. And I don’t want to know. I’ll have a look at him myself.”
Offended, Jacomuzzi went back to his men. The lab photographer had finished, and now it was Dr.
