'Oh, really?'
'Yes. Extortion and bribery.'
'So there's no hope?'
'Well, you can hope that the judges will be lenient and let them out in five years. Just kidding. Actually, you could try the company's lawyer, Di Bartolomeo.'
...
'Listen, Inspector, it's not the company's job to deal with expropriation procedures. That's up to the City Council of the district in which the expropriated land is located.'
'Then what are you people doing there?'
'That's none of your business.'
And the lawyer hung up. A little touchy, this Di Bartolomeo. Maybe his job was to cover the asses of Nicolosi father and son from the repercussions of their frauds, except that this time he hadn't succeeded.
The office hadn't been open five minutes before the company land surveyor Tumminello saw Inspector Montalbano standing in front of him, looking somewhat agitated. And, in fact, it had been a restless night for Montalbano; he'd been unable to fall asleep and so stayed up reading Faulkner. The surveyor, whose troubled son who was mixed up with hoodlums, brawls, and motorcycles once again hadn't come home that night, turned pale, and his hands began to shake. Montalbano, noticing the others reaction upon seeing him, imagined the worst.
This guys trying to hide something.
He was still a cop, no matter how well read.
'Is anything wrong?' asked Tumminello, expecting to hear that his son had been arrested. Which, in fact, would have been a stroke of luck, or the least of all evils, since he might as easily have had his throat slit by his little friends.
'I need some information. About an expropriation.'
Tumminello visibly relaxed.
'You over your scare now?' Montalbano couldn't resist asking him.
'Yes,' the surveyor admitted frankly. 'I'm worried about my son. He didn't come home last night.'
'Does he do that often?'
'Yes, actually. You see, hes mixed up with'
'Then you shouldn't worry,' Montalbano cut him off. 'He didn't have time for the problems of youth. I need to see the bill of sale or expropriation for the land used to build the Crasto tunnel. That's your area, isnt it?'
'Yes, it is. But there's no point in taking out the documents; I know all the information. Tell me specifically what it is you want to know.'
'I want to know about the land that belonged to the Rizzitano family.'
'As I expected,' said the surveyor. 'When I heard about the weapons being discovered, and then about the two dead bodies, I thought: Didn't those places belong to the Rizzitano's? And so I went and looked at the documents.'
'And what do the documents say?'
'First, there's something you should know. There were a lot of proprietors whose land stood to be damaged, so to speak, by the construction of the road and tunnel. Forty-five, to be exact.'
'Jesus!'
'There's even a little postage stamp of land, two thousand square meters, which, because it was divided up in an inheritance, has five owners. The note of transfer cant be made out collectively to the heirs; it must be made out individually to each one. Once our order was granted by the prefect, we offered the proprietors a modest sum, since most of the land in question was farmland. For Calogero Rizzitano, who was a presumed proprietor, since there's no piece of paper confirming his ownership, I mean there's no deed of inheritance, since his father died without leaving a will for Calogero Rizzitano, we had to resort to Article 143 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which concerns rightful claimants who cannot be found. As you probably know, Article 143 states'
'I'm not interested. How long ago did you make out this note of transfer?'
'Ten years ago?'
'Therefore, ten years ago, Calogero Rizzitano could not be found.'
'Nor after that, either. Because out of the forty-five landowners, forty-four appealed for a higher figure than the sum we were offering. And they got it.'
'And the forty-fifth, the one who did not, was Calogero Rizzitano.'
'Exactly. And we put the money due him in escrow. Since for us, to all intents and purposes, he's still alive. Nobody asked for a declaration of presumed death. So when he reappears, he can pick up his money.'
...
When he reappears, the land surveyor had said. But everything pointed to the conclusion that Lillo Rizzitano was in no mood to reappear. Or, more likely, was no longer in any condition to reappear. Headmaster Burgio and Montalbano had taken for granted that the wounded Lillo, carried on board a military truck and driven who-knows- where on the night of July 9, had survived. But they had no idea how serious his wounds might have been. He could well have died in transit or in hospital, if they'd even brought him to a hospital. Why keep conjuring visions out of nothing? It was very possible that, at the moment of their discovery, the two corpses in the Crasticeddru were in better shape than Lillo Rizzitano had been in for some time. For fifty years and more, not a word, not a line. Nothing. Not even when they requisitioned his land and demolished the remains of his house and everything else
