The Potter's Field

“Yes. He brought me here in his car. I have to take mine to Milan tomorrow, and it’s still at the mechanic’s.”

“Would you do me a favor? Could you ask him if he would come in to see me now instead of tomorrow morning ? It shouldn’t take but five minutes.”

“Of course.”

13

Michele Tripodi also looked to be about forty but, unlike Dambrusco, who was diminutive and skinny, he was tall, athletic, and affable, a handsome specimen.

“Carlo told me Giovanni has disappeared. Is it true? Does Dolores know?”

“It was Mrs. Alfano herself who got things moving.”

“But when would he have disappeared? When she got back from Gioia Tauro, Dolores told me Giovanni had taken ship.”

“That’s what Giovanni led her to believe, or was forced to have her believe.”

Michele Tripodi’s face darkened.

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“You don’t like the sound of what?”

“What you just said. Giovanni never deceives Dolores, nor would he have any reason to make her believe something that wasn’t true.”

“Are you sure?”

“About what?”

“About both things.”

“Listen, Inspector. Giovanni is so taken by Dolores, I mean physically taken, that he’s not sure, he told me, that he could even make love to another woman.”

“Does he have any enemies?”

“I don’t know whether during the long sea voyages . . . at any rate, I think he would have mentioned it to me.”

“Listen, this is a delicate subject, but I have to ask you about it. If Giovanni has been kidnapped, couldn’t this be a sort of vendetta by proxy?”

Michele Tripodi understood at once.

“You mean a vendetta against the Sinagras?”

“Yes.”

“You see, Inspector, Giovanni felt very indebted, and grateful, to Don Balduccio, who helped him out when his father died . . . But Giovanni’s an honest man; he has no truck with the Sinagras’ business . . . And he always felt ashamed of what his father, Filippo, did in Colombia . . . It’s true, of course, that whenever he comes to Vigàta he pays a call on Don Balduccio, no doubt about it, but it’s not as if they’re so close that—”

“I understand. As far as you know, has Giovanni ever used cocaine?”

Michele Tripodi started laughing. A hearty, full-bellied laugh.

“Are you kidding? Giovanni hates drugs of any kind! He doesn’t even smoke! And he even made Dolores give it up! Remember how his father was killed? Well, that fact marked him for life, and he has behaved accordingly.”

“I’m sorry, but I have another delicate question to ask you. It’s about Dolores. It seems there are two conflicting opinions about her in town.”

“Inspector, Dolores is a beautiful woman who is forced to remain alone too often and for too long. And perhaps she’s a bit too impulsive, and a bit too expansive, and this can sometimes give rise to misunderstandings.”

“Tell me one.”

“One what?”

“Give me an example of one such misunderstanding.”

“Well, I don’t know . . . After she’d been in Vigàta for about a year, a boy, an eighteen-year-old from a good family, started serenading her, literally singing serenades to her, and then started harassing her on the phone, and one time even tried to enter her apartment . . . Dolores had to call the carabinieri . . .”

“Only eighteen-year-olds? No adults?”

“Well, about two years ago there was a more serious episode where a butcher lost his head over her . . . doing ridiculous things like sending her a bouquet of roses every day . . . Eventually he had to move to Catania, and poor Dolores’s persecutions ended there, fortunately.”

Montalbano laughed.

“Yes, I’d heard that story of the love-smitten butcher before . . . His name was Pecorella, if I’m not mistaken...”

“No, Pecorini,” Tripodi corrected him.

Was it important to know that the butcher who rented his house to Mimì for his amorous trysts had also fallen in love with Dolores Alfano two years before? At first glance, it appeared not. But there was another question that had come into the inspector’s head the moment Tripodi had told him the story of the butcher. Tripodi said that to rid herself of the boy who was bothering her, Dolores had called the carabinieri. But he didn’t say what action Dolores had taken in the butcher’s case. She certainly hadn’t asked the carabinieri for help on that occasion. The butcher, however, had resolved the problem by moving to Catania. And this was where the question arose: Why, from one day to the next, had he moved away from Vigàta if he was so in love with Dolores? What could have happened to him?

“Fazio! Into my office, quick! Fazio!”

“What is it, Chief?”

“You remember Pecorini?”

“The butcher? Yes.”

“I want to know, by tomorrow morning at the latest, why he left Vigàta two years ago and opened a butcher shop in Catania.”

“All right, Chief. But what did this Pecorini do, sell meat with mad cow disease or something?”

It was now late, and the inspector felt mighty hungry. Just as he was standing up, the telephone decided to ring. He hesitated a moment, wondering whether or not he should answer, but a goddamned sense of duty got the better of him.

“Chief ! Ahh Chief! That’d be Mr. Giacchetta.”