The Terra-Cotta Dog

14

With Adelina, it was possible for an entire season to go by without the two of them ever seeing each other. Every week Montalbano would leave shopping money for her on the kitchen table, and every thirty days her monthly wages. Between them, however, a tacit system of communication had developed: when Adelina needed more shopping money, she would leave the caruso, the little clay money box he had bought at a fair and kept because it looked nice, on the table for him to see; when new supplies of socks or underwear were needed, she would leave a pair on the bed. Naturally the system did not work in one direction only; Montalbano, too, would tell her things by the strangest means, which she, however, understood. For some time now, the inspector had noticed that, when he was tense, troubled, and nervous, Adelina would somehow know it from the way he left the house in the morning, and in these instances she would make special dishes for him to find on his return, to lift his spirits. That day, Adelina had been back in action: in the fridge Montalbano found a squid sauce, dense and black, just the way he liked it. Was there or wasn't there a hint of oregano? He inhaled the aroma deeply before putting it on the heat, but this investigation, too, came to nothing. Once he'd finished eating, he donned his bathing suit with the intention of taking a brief stroll on the beach. After walking only a little while, he felt tired, the balls of his feet sore.

Sex standing up and walking on sand will bring any man to a bad end.

He'd once had sex standing up and afterward did not feel so destroyed as the proverb implied; whereas it was true that if you walked on sand, even the firm sand nearest the sea, you tired quickly. He glanced at his watch and was amazed: some little while! He'd been walking for two hours. He collapsed on the beach.

"Inspector! Inspector!"

The voice came from far away. He struggled to his feet and looked out at the sea, convinced that someone must be calling him from a boat or dinghy. But the sea was deserted all the way to the horizon.

"Inspector, over here! Inspector!"

He turned around. It was Tortorella, waving his arms from the highway that for a long stretch ran parallel to the beach.

As Montalbano quickly washed and dressed, Tortorella told him they'd received an anonymous telephone call at the station.

"Who took the call?" asked Montalbano.

If it was Catarella, who knows what hare brained idiocies he might have understood or reported?

"Don't worry," said Tortorella smiling, having guessed what his chief was thinking. "He'd gone out to the bathroom for a minute, and I was manning the switchboard for him. The voice had a Palermo accent, putting is in the place of rs, but he might have been doing it on purpose. He said we would find some bastards corpse at the Pasture, inside a green car."

"Who went to check it out?"

"Fazio and Galluzzo did, and I raced over here to get you. I'm not sure that was the right thing; maybe the phone call was only a joke."

"What a bunch of jokesters we Sicilians are!"

...

Montalbano arrived at the Pasture at five oclock, the hour of what Gege called the changing of the guard, the time of day when the unpaid couples, that is, lovers, adulterers, boyfriends and girlfriends got off (in every sense, thought Montalbano), giving way to Gege flock, bitchin blondes from Eastern Europe, Bulgarian transvestites, ebony Nigerian nymphs, Brazilian viados, Moroccan queens, and so on in procession, a veritable UN of cock, ass, and cunt. And there indeed was the green car, trunk open, surrounded by three carabinieri vehicles. Fazios car was stopped a short distance away. Montalbano got out and Galluzzo came up to him.

"We got here late."

They had an unwritten understanding with the National Police. Whoever arrived first at the scene of a crime would shout Bingo! and take the case. This prevented meddling, polemics, elbowing, and long faces. But Fazio was gloomy.

"They got here first."

"So what? What do you care? We're not paid by the corpse, on a job-by-job basis."

By strange coincidence, the green car was right next to the same bush beside which an outstanding corpse had been found a year earlier, a case in which Montalbano had become very involved. The lieutenant of the carabinieri, who was from Bergamo and went by the name of Donizetti, approached, and they shook hands.

"We were tipped off by a phone call," said the lieutenant.

Someone really wanted to make sure the body was found. The inspector studied the curled-up corpse in the trunk. The man appeared to have been shot only once, with the bullet entering his mouth, shattering his teeth and lips, and exiting through the back of the neck, opening a wound the size of a fist. Montalbano didn't recognize the face.

"I'm told you know the manager of this open-air whorehouse," the lieutenant inquired with some disdain.

"Yes, he's a friend of mine," Montalbano replied in a tone of obvious defiance.

"Do you know where I could find him?"

"At home, I would imagine."

"He's not there."

"Excuse me, but why do you think I can tell you where he is?"

"You're his friend, you said so yourself."

"Oh, and I suppose you can tell me, at this exact moment, where all your friends from Bergamo are and what they're doing?"

Cars were continually arriving from the main road, turning onto the Pastures small byways, noticing the swarm of carabinieri squad cars, shifting into reverse, and quickly returning to the road they'd come from. The blondes from the East, Brazilian viados, Nigerian nymphs, and the rest of the gang were coming to work, smelling something fishy, and scattering in every direction. It promised to be a miserable night for Gege business.

The lieutenant walked back towards the green car. Montalbano turned his back to him and without saying a word returned to his own vehicle. He said to Fazio:

"You and Galluzzo stay here. See what they're doing and what they find out. I'm going to the station."

...

Montalbano stopped in front of Sarcutos Stationery and Book Shop, the only one in Vig that was true to its sign; the other two sold not books but satchels, notebooks, and pens. He remembered he'd finished the Vasquez Montalb novel and had nothing else to read.

"We've got the new book on Falcone and Borsellino!"

Signora Sarcuto announced as soon as she saw him enter.

She still hadn't understood that Montalbano hated books that talked about the Mafia, murder, and Mafia victims. He didn't know why she couldn't grasp this, since he never bought them and didn't even read their jacket copy. He bought a book by Luigi Consolo, who'd won an important literary prize some time before. After he'd taken a few steps outside, the book slid out from under his arm and fell onto the sidewalk. He bent down to pick it up, then got back in his car.

At headquarters Catarella told him there was no news. Montalbano obsessively wrote his name in every book he bought. As he reached for one of the pens on his desk, his eye fell on the coins that Jacomuzzi had left him. The first one, a copper coin dated 1934, had the kings profile and the words Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy on one side, and a spike of wheat and C. 5, five centesimi, on the other. The second coin, dated 1936 and also copper, was a little bigger and had the same kings head with the same words on one side, and a bee resting on a flower with the letter C and the number 10, ten centesimi, on the other. The third was made of a light metal alloy, with the inevitable kings head and accompanying words on one side, on the other an eagle displayed, with a Roman fasces partially visible behind it. This side also had four inscriptions: L. 1, which meant one lira; ITALIA, which meant Italy; 1942, which was the date of minting; and XX, which meant year twenty of the Fascist era. As he was staring at this last coin, Montalbano remembered what it was he had seen when bending down to pick up the book he'd dropped in front of the bookshop. He'd seen the front window of the store next door, which featured a display of antique coins.

He got up from his desk, informed Catarella he was going out and would be back in half an hour at the most, and headed off to the shop on foot. It was called Things, and things were what it sold: desert roses, stamps, candlesticks, rings, brooches, coins, semiprecious stones. He went inside, and a neat, pretty girl welcomed him with a smile. Sorry to disappoint her, the inspector explained that he wasn't there to buy anything, but since he'd seen some ancient coins displayed in the window, he wanted to know if there was anyone, there in the store or in Vig, with expertise in numismatics.

"Of course there is," said the girl, still smiling delightfully. "There's my grandfather."

"Where might I disturb him?"

"You wouldn't be disturbing him at all. Actually, he'd be happy to help you. He's in the back room. Just wait a moment while I go tell him."

He hadn't even had time to look at a hammerless late-nineteenth-century pistol when the girl reappeared.

"You can go inside."

The back room was a glorious jumble of old phonographs with horns, prehistoric sewing machines, copying presses, paintings, prints, chamber pots, and pipes. And it was entirely lined with bookshelves on which sat, higgledy-piggledy, an assortment of incunabula, parchment-bound tomes, lampshades, umbrellas, and opera hats. In the middle of it all was a desk with an old man sitting behind it, an art-nouveau lamp shedding light on his labors. He was holding a stamp with a pair of tweezers and examining it under a magnifying glass.

"What is it?" he asked gruffly, without looking up.

Montalbano laid the three coins down in front of him. The old man took his eyes momentarily off the stamp and glanced distractedly at them.

"Worthless," he said.

Of the various old men he'd been encountering in his investigation of the Crasticeddru deaths, this one was the grumpiest.

I ought to gather them all together at an old folks home, the inspector thought. That'd make it easier to question them.

"I know they're worthless."

"So what is it you want to know?"

"When they went out of circulation."

"Use your brain a little."

"When the Republic was proclaimed?" Montalbano hesitantly guessed.

He felt like a student who hadn't studied for the exam. The old man laughed, and his laugh sounded like the noise of two empty tin cans rubbing together.

"Am I wrong?"

"Very wrong. The Americans landed here the night of July 910, 1943. In October of that same year, these coins went out of use. They were replaced by Amlire, the paper money printed up by Amgot, the Allied military administration of the occupied territories. And since these bills were for one, five, and ten lire, the centesimo coins disappeared from circulation."

...

By the time Fazio and Galluzzo returned, it was already dark.

The inspector scolded them.

"Damn you both! You certainly took your time!"

"Who, us?" Fazio shot back. "You know what the lieu tenants like! Before he could touch the body, he had to wait for Pasquano and the judge to arrive. And they certainly did take their time!"

"And so?"

"A new-laid corpse if I ever saw one, fresh as can be. Pasquano said less than an hour had passed between the killing and the phone calls. The guy had an ID card on him. Pietro Gullo's his name, forty-two years old, blue eyes, blond hair, fair complexion, born in Merfi, resident of Fela, Via Matteotti 32, married, no distinguishing features."

"You ought to get a job at the Records Office."

Fazio nobly ignored the provocation and continued.

"I went to Montelusa and checked the archives. This Gullo had an uneventful youth, two robberies and a brawl. Then he straightened himself out, at least apparently. He dealt in grain."

...

"I really appreciate that you could see me right away," Montalbano said to Headmaster Burgio, who had answered the door.

"What are you saying? The pleasure's all mine". He let the inspector in, led him into the living room, and asked him to sit down. "Angelina!" the headmaster called.

A tiny old woman appeared, curious about the unexpected visit, looking smart and well groomed, her lively, attentive eyes sparkling behind thick glasses. The old folks home! thought Montalbano.

"Allow me to introduce my wife, Angelina." Montalbano gave her an admiring bow. He sincerely liked elderly ladies who kept up appearances, even at home.

"Please forgive me for bothering you at suppertime."

"No bother at all. On the contrary, Inspector, are you busy this evening?"

"Not at all."

"Why don't you stay and have supper with us? We're just having some old-people fare, since were supposed to eat light: soft vegetables and striped mullet with oil and lemon."

"Sounds like a feast to me." Mrs. Burgio exited, content.

"What can I do for you?" asked the headmaster.

"I've managed to situate the period in which the double homicide of the Crasticeddru took place."

"Oh. So when did it happen?"

"Definitely between early 1943 and October of the same year."

"How did you come to that conclusion?"

"Easy. The terra-cotta dog, as Mr. Burruano told us, was sold after Christmas of 42, which reasonably means after the Epiphany of 43. The coins found inside the bowl went out of circulation in October that same year."

He paused.

"And this can mean only one thing," he added.

But what that one thing was, he didn't say. He patiently waited while Burgio collected his thoughts, stood up, and took a few steps around the room.

"I get it," said the old man. "You're saying that during this period, the Crasticeddru cave belonged to the Rizzitanos."

"Exactly. And as you told me, the cave was already sealed off by the boulder at the time, because the Rizzitanos kept merchandise to be sold on the black market in it. They must have known about the other cave, the one where the dead couple were brought."

The headmaster gave him a confused look.

"Why do you say they were brought there?"

"Because they were killed somewhere else. Of that I am absolutely certain."

"But it doesn't make any sense. Why put them there and set them up as if they were asleep, with the jug, the bowl of money, and the dog?"

"I've been asking myself the same question. And maybe the only person who could tell us something is your friend Lillo Rizzitano."

Signora Angelina came in.

"It's ready."

The soft vegetables, which consisted of the leaves and flowers of Sicilian zucchini, the long, smooth kind, which are white, lightly speckled with green, had come out so tender, so delicate, that Montalbano actually felt deeply moved. With each bite he could feel his stomach purifying itself, turning clean and shiny the way he'd seen happen with certain fakirs on television.

"How do you find them?" asked Signora Angelina.

"Beautiful," said Montalbano. Seeing the couples surprise, he blushed and explained himself. "I'm sorry. Sometimes I abuse my adjectives."

The striped mullet, boiled and dressed in olive oil, lemon, and parsley, was every bit as light as the vegetables. Only when the fruit was brought to the table did the headmaster come back to the question Montalbano had asked him but not before he'd had his say on the problem of the schools and the reform the new minister of education had decided to carry out, which would abolish mandatory secondary-school attendance.

"In Russia at the time of the tsars," said Burgio, "they had secondary schools, though they called them whatever theyre called in Russian. In Italy it was Gentile who called them lyceums when he instituted his own reform, which placed humanistic studies above all others. Well, Lenins Communists, being the kind of Communists they were, didn't have the courage to abolish secondary schools. Only an upstart, a semi-illiterate nonentity like our minister, could conceive of such a thing. What's he called, Guastella?"

"Vastella," said Signora Angelina.

Actually, he was called something else as well, but the inspector refrained from pointing this out.

"Lillo and I were friends in everything, but not in school, since he was a few years ahead of me. When I entered my third year of lyceum, he had just graduated. On the night of the American landing, Lillo's house, which was at the foot of the Crasto, was destroyed. From what I was able to find out once the storm had passed, Lillo had been at home alone and was seriously injured. A peasant saw some Italian soldiers putting him on a truck; he was bleeding profusely. That was the last I heard of Lillo. I haven't had any news since, though God knows I've searched far and wide!"

"Is it possible nobody from his family survived?"

"I don't know."

The headmaster noticed that his wife looked lost in thought, absent, her eyes half-closed.

"Angelina!" Burgio called.

The old woman roused herself, then smiled at Montalbano.

"Forgive me. My husband says I've always been a woman of fantasy, but he doesn't mean it as a compliment. He means I sometimes let my fantasies run away with me."