The Fourth Secret (3 page)

“I want you to be more considerate.”

“Why, what did I do to you?”

“To me, nothing. But you were about to damage something that belongs to the general public. You almost broke the telephone.”

He was certainly right. But Montalbano didn’t care for the lecture. If that man wanted to pick a fight, he was going to get one. He opened the door, slowly got out of the car, balanced his weight on his legs, and looked into the eyes of that man who was about the same age.

“I must warn you before you do anything stupid. I am a marshal in the carabinieri,” he said.

Montalbano came back to his senses. That was the last thing he needed, a brawl between a police inspector and a carabinieri marshal. And who was going to come and restore order, the border patrol? The best thing was to end things there.

“My apologies, I got very upset and …”

“All right, all right, you may go.”

“Can I ask you something, Marshal?”

“Go ahead.”

“How did you manage to make that phone work?”

“Make it work? I wasn’t talking to anyone. I was cursing because I couldn’t get a dial tone. Only after, did I realize that the red light was on.”

“And so you were angry, too.”

“Yes, but I didn’t try to smash the entire phone.”

“Yes, Inspector, Dr. Zito came to the office, broke a vase, threw some papers on the floor, and then left. When he has a toothache, he becomes more frenzied than Orlando.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“He said he was going to drown himself in the sea. He always says that. I don’t think he’ll be back anytime soon, since he asked Dr. Giordano to fill in for him on the newscast. But if I can be of help …”

Niccolò’s secretary was a sweetheart: a beautiful thirty-year-old woman who had a soft spot for Montalbano.

“Look, last night, Niccolò aired a good story about accidents in the workplace.”

“Do you want me to send you a copy?”

“Yes, but I need something a little more complicated. Niccolò clearly put together a montage of these accidents, drawing from a large number of pictures he must have had at his disposal. Is that right?”

“Yes, Inspector.”

“So I would need all the material he has put together, not just the images he showed last night. I know it will take a while and …”

“Not at all,” the secretary smiled. “The task of collecting all the images of the accidents in the workplace has already been done by Dr. Zito in preparation for the story. We have everything in our archives. All I need to do is make you a copy.”

“Will that take long?”

“Ten minutes.”

When he got to the station, Fazio and Augello were already waiting for him in his office.

“Before we start talking, I need to make a phone call.”

He dialed the number.

“Dr. Pasquano, it’s Montalbano. Doc, please take it easy. Just one question and I’ll let you get back to dismembering another corpse. The others who died in the workplace, were their feet clean?”

As Fazio and Augello looked at him, confused, Montalbano listened to the answer the doctor howled through the phone, thanked him, and hung up.

“I’ll explain later,” he said. “Fazio, you go first.”

“There isn’t much to say, number thirty-eight on Via Madonna del Rosario doesn’t exist. The street ends with number thirty-six, which is a shoe store. The owner is …”

He stopped and took a piece of paper out of his pocket.

“… Formica, Vicenzo, son of the late Giovanni and Elisabetta …”

“Fazio, what the fuck?!”

Halted midway through that census-reporting impulse that sometimes overcame him, Fazio blushed and put the paper back in his pocket.

“Nobody knows an Attilio Siracusa. He’s not even one of their clients. I went to the shop across the street, which is an odd number, thirty-one. It’s a barber and they have never heard of this Siracusa, either.”

“And you, Mimì?”

“There is only one clerk at the post office window for priority mail. She looks just like a witch. As soon as I saw her, I felt like running away. But she turned out to be a sweet and gentle creature.”

“Did you fall in love, Mimì?”

“No, but one never stops marveling at how deceitful appearances really are. You were right, Salvo, there aren’t that many people who use priority mail to send something from Vigata to Vigata. I showed her the envelope and she remembered it well. A little boy had come to send it; he had the form already filled out and the exact change.”

“And so that’s how we got screwed,” Fazio observed.

“Did she explain why the letter arrived so late?”

“Oh yes,” Mimì said. “There was a strike organized by COBAS.”

“And whoever mailed the envelope didn’t know that,” Montalbano said. “So one thing is certain. The fake Mr. Siracusa wanted to prevent the murder, for this was definitely a murder.”

“And what’s this business about the feet?” Mimì asked.

Montalbano explained and then added: “Pasquano told me that the others’ feet were normal. Some dirty, some clean. Puka was the only one who had gotten a pedicure.”

“I can’t really believe that a construction worker, Albanian or otherwise, goes regularly to get …”

“Unless,” Montalbano interrupted, “he was just pretending to be a construction worker. What did our esteemed Dr. Augello say just now, overtaken by a surprising bout of originality? That appearances are deceiving. Or rather: not all that glitters is gold. Or even better: the clothes don’t make the man.”

He polished off a huge plate of fried mullet, managing to reach the concentration of a Hindu Brahmin, the kind that causes you to levitate, only that his kind of concentration went the opposite direction, toward a deep an earthly rooting, that is, he was completely taken by the aromatic smell, the dense taste of that fish, blocking out every other thought or feeling. He even managed to make the outside noise of cars, voices, radios, and blaring televisions disappear, creating for himself a sort of bubble of absolute silence. Once finished, he got up from the table, not only full, not only satisfied, but with a sense of complete contentment. As soon as he walked out the door of the Trattoria San Calogero he almost got run over by a car that missed him only because he jumped back on the sidewalk at the last moment. But the harmony that connected him to the sound of the celestial spheres had been broken. To get out of the bad mood that had hit him as soon as he got back in touch with the world after that heavenly interval, he decided to go for his usual walk on the pier, all the way down to the lighthouse. There he sat on the usual rock, lit a cigarette, and started to think. All right, that whole business started with an anonymous letter that foretold a murder that took place just as described. It was clear that it was not the murderer challenging the police, a “catch-me-if-you-can type of thing.” No, that anonymous sender wasn’t the murderer, and actually tried to prevent the murder. He had been unlucky; his letter didn’t get there in time. Even unluckier, after all, was that poor Albanian devil, Puka. And he didn’t quite make sense, Montalbano thought. Why? Just because he went for pedicures? But that was a racist thought! Do all Albanians have to be ugly, dirty, and evil? No, the thing that bothered him was that a construction worker, whether Albanian or Finnish, would get a pedicure. But that was even worse: that was a classist thought.

“Why don’t you go for a pedicure?” Livia had asked him a bit earlier, as she looked at his toenails that had thickened and were now pointing one to Christ and the other to Saint John.

He didn’t want to go; he thought it was something for the rich or the effeminate. So, in conclusion, that was an investigation born of a prejudice layered over another prejudice!

He didn’t feel like going back to the station. He felt empty inside. He decided what he was doing wasn’t right, that is, hiding the anonymous letter from the carabinieri marshal
.
But his cop instincts were like those of a dog: it was hard to let go of the bone after he has sunk his teeth into it. What was he supposed to do?

He wasted quite some time throwing little stones at a bottle cap floating in the water, but he couldn’t hit it, not even once; a cold breeze had started blowing, covering the waves in lace. From Capo Rossello, he saw two black clouds roll in, clearly bearing bad intentions. He felt he had to do something before the storm came; it was an uncomfortable sensation of urgency, of rush. The only thing to do was give in to his instincts, letting them guide him, following their lead. He went back to the station and called Fazio.

“Can you check if the construction site is still roped off?”

It was. That meant none of the workers would be there, just the security guard maybe.

“What are you doing? Are you going there?”

“Yes, before it starts raining.”

“Sir, be careful not to be recognized. If Verruso gets wind you’re lurking around his crime scene, he’ll cause a huge stink, guaranteed.

It took him twenty minutes to get to Tonnarello. The last mile of the road was just dirt, riddled with holes. From the top of a hill, he saw the construction site down below: the building, or whatever it was, rose from the middle of a solitary, bleak valley, without any kind of landscaping around it. There were no other buildings, either, nor any cultivated fields: the only things visible were white stones, agaves, and prickly pears. Who the fuck thought of building a house or whatever it was in that desolate
chiarchiaro
? The place looked better suited to a hospital for infectious diseases or a maximum-security prison. The construction site was completely surrounded by a seven-foot fence composed of horizontal planks nailed to poles planted in the ground at regular intervals. At the center of the side that faced Montalbano, there was an opening in the fence, a rather large one, clearly the entrance used by trucks and the workers. He squinted to see better: there was an opening in a fence, but from one side to the other, there was white-and-red plastic tape, meaning that entry was prohibited. Those were the seals the magistrate had put on the site. However, they weren’t really obstacles. Inside the fence, right next to the opening, there was a small metal shack; it must have been some sort of office. There was another shack on the left-hand side, attached to the fence: it was larger, rather long, probably where the workers changed. He stood there awhile, looking, but he didn’t see any movement: the site was deserted, unless someone was sleeping inside one of the shacks. The black clouds had covered the sky; he could hear thunder from far away. Montalbano went back to his car, drove down the hill, and stopped in front of the opening. There was a big sign that explained they were building an apartment tower and that the owner was a Di Gennaro, Giacomo. The contractor’s license number followed, along with the construction company name, Santa Maria, and its owner, Alfredo Corso, as well as the name of the site’s foreman, Architect Mario Mattia Manfredi. He got out of the car, pulled one piece of tape up with his hand and the other down with his foot. He was inside. He walked to the door of the small shack; it was locked with a chain. And the same went for the bigger shack; only there were two windows, one of which was half open. He started walking around the scaffolding and saw the place where poor Puka had landed: they had drawn the outline of his body on the ground, and the area around the head was dark with blood.

He looked up: more or less around the fifth floor, a plank was missing from the side of the scaffolding. He looked down and saw it broken in two near the body’s outline. He squatted, looking closely at the spot where the plank had been broken: it looked uneven and didn’t appear to have been tampered with. Although it was an old plank. So they wanted to give the impression that Puka had been walking on the scaffolding, and suddenly a plank gave way, and Puka accidentally fell.

Wait a second, the inspector thought, if that’s what happened, they should have known that Puka would have ended up on the scaffolding underneath, getting a bad scare but nothing more.

The dynamics of the accident must have been different, and certainly the murderer must have considered that problem. But there was no way of knowing it without climbing up the scaffolding, all the way to the fifth floor, like a monkey. Are you kidding me? I’ll try to find out what the witnesses told the carabinieri through Fazio, who, I’m sure, has a few spies among their ranks, he told himself.

That was his last thought. The rain came down brutally, taking the shape of hail that landed on the inspector’s head like so many stones. Cursing, he ran toward the car, passed through the tape sealing off the scene, opened the door, got in, and started it. But he didn’t leave. He didn’t leave because his feet refused to press down on the pedals, and his ass was heavy as a boulder on the seat. His whole body was rebelling; it didn’t want to leave that place. Fine, fine, he told himself. And as if to show his intentions to his feet and his ass, he steered slightly toward the opening. He felt immediately that he was returning to normal. The hail had worsened; it was useless to turn on the windshield wipers, it made no difference. He proceeded blindly, breaking the tape with his car, drove to the bigger shack, all the way to its open window. He got the car as close as he could, mustered up all his courage, got out, climbed, slipped, cursed, muddied himself, climbed on the hood, and jumped through the window. He landed, crushing his shoulder. His eyes teared up from the pain. He got up. He was completely drenched. It was pitch-black inside; the storm had brought the darkness of night at five in the afternoon. There, he had done what he was told, any other suggestions from his body? His body didn’t say anything at all. So why did it lead him there? It felt like being inside a drum played by a hundred hands. It was the hail pounding on the sheet metal. Deaf, blind, in pain, his arms stretched in front of him like a sleepwalker, he moved three steps forward and, for some reason, he got the idea that the inside of the shack was empty. So he started walking back toward the door and slammed his left leg violently against the edge of a wooden bench. The same exact spot he had bruised two days earlier, slipping on the bathroom floor. The pain, almost unbearable, climbed all the way up to his brain. In horror, he discovered he had become deaf. How could it be that a blow to his leg made him lose his hearing? Then he realized that the fish-tank silence that suddenly came over him was caused by a very simple event: it had stopped hailing. He walked to the front door of the shack, reached for the switch, found it, and flipped on the light. There was no risk of somebody seeing the light through the window; no one would venture all the way into that horrible
chiarchiaro
where the construction site was in such bad weather. The shack was clean, neat. There was a long table, two benches, four chairs. In the back, three stalls: a toilet and two showers. Nailed to the wall without windows, there was a long coat rack. Five pegs held up overalls and clothes with paint stains; above each, was a nail that held up a yellow hard hat; the work shoes were on the floor underneath the clothes. Five of the pegs were occupied, but between the third and the fourth, there was an empty one: no hard hat, no shoes, no clothes. Montalbano got the idea that it must have been Puka’s peg; the carabinieri must have taken his personal effects with them. Now, a subtle music was coming down from the ceiling; it must have started to rain softly, in thin threads, like the hair of an angel. He went to check the two showers but didn’t find anything. As soon as he walked into the toilet, which was very clean, spotless, he felt the urge to pee. Out of habit, he shut the door. When he turned around to get out, he saw that the lightbulb that hung low on an electric wire, created a curious rainbow like reflection on the metal door. He stopped to look and noticed, that just above eye level, there were a few brown stains that came out of a dent shaped like a crescent moon, a dent caused by a metallic object that had violently hit the door. He got close, almost touching them with his nose; there was no doubt, those were bloodstains, left untouched on the metal surface. If the material had been wood, they would have been absorbed. They were rather big stains, enough for any kind of test. But how was he going to collect samples? He needed to go back to his car. He pulled a chair under the window he had come through, stepped onto it, and looked out. It had stopped raining. He started to climb out, and as soon as his body was halfway outside, the hail resumed, worse than before. The bad weather, or whoever was sending it, had ambushed him. Drenched again, he got in the car, grabbed a pocketknife and an old plastic bag from the glove compartment, put them in his pocket, and had a smoke as he waited for the hail to stop. He managed to climb and miraculously balance himself on the hood, but as soon as he leaned forward to reach the window, his feet slipped, both at the same time, and he ended up slamming his chin on the window frame. As he was falling headfirst in the mud between the car and the side of the shack, he took comfort in the thought that he was going to be better off than Puka, that poor devil.