The Potter's Field

But the dog vanished around a corner. It was right. It knew it wasn’t Argo. The idiot was him, pretending to be Ulysses. He finished his cigarette, got back in his car, and began the journey home to Vigàta.

He awoke after an untroubled, satisfying sleep. On the road from Mascalippa, his mind had cleared up, and he now knew what he had to do. He phoned Livia before she left for work. At nine o’clock he called Dr. Lattes, the chief of the commissioner’s cabinet. And he arrived at the station fresh, calm, and rested, as if he had got a full night’s sleep. Whereas, in fact, he had slept barely three hours.

“Ahh Chief Chief! Yest’day Proseccotor Gommaseo called ’n’ said—”

“I know already, Fazio told me. Is he in his office?”

“Who? Gommaseo?”

“No, Fazio.”

“Yessir.”

“Send him to me at once.”

Lots of newly arrived mail, gobs of it, covered the whole desktop. He sat down and pushed the envelopes to the far edges to create a bit of space in front of him—not for writing anything, but for resting his elbows.

Fazio came in.

“Close the door, sit down, and tell me the story of Balduccio Sinagra and Pecorini again, in fuller detail.”

“Chief, you told me to talk to Giovanni Alfano’s third friend, remember? Well, it was this friend, whose name is Franco Di Gregorio, and who seems like a decent man, who told me the whole story.”

“But the other two didn’t even mention it to me.”

“They didn’t want to talk about it.”

“And why not?”

“If you’ll let me tell it my way, I’ll get to that.”

“All right, go on.”

“Let’s just say that over two years ago, this fifty-year-old butcher falls head over heels for Dolores Alfano, who used to buy her meat from him. But he doesn’t go about it under cover, on the sly—nosirree, he starts sending her a bouquet of roses every morning, buys her gifts, sweets, and even fancy things, plants himself outside her home, waiting for her to come out so he can follow behind her . . . In short, the whole town finds out about it.”

“Is he married?”

“No, he’s not.”

“But doesn’t he know that Dolores is Alfano’s wife, and that Alfano is Balduccio’s protégé?”

“He does, he does.”

“Then he’s a fool!”

“No, Chief, he’s not a fool. He’s a cocky, violent man. The kind who says he’s not afraid of anything or anyone.”

“A blowhard?”

“No, sir. Arturo Pecorini is a man who doesn’t kid around. He’s a thug. When he was barely twenty years old he was arrested for murder, then acquitted for lack of evidence. Five years later, another acquittal for attempted murder. After that there are no more serious offenses, aside from a few brawls, since he is a bully, after all. When friends tell him he should be more careful with this Dolores stuff, he replies that he doesn’t give a shit about the Sinagras. He says, let ’em try and they’ll see.”

“And why didn’t Dolores go to the carabinieri the way she did with the other lovesick suitor?”

Fazio grinned.

“Di Gregorio says she didn’t do anything because she actually liked the butcher. A lot, in fact.”

“Were they lovers?”

“Nobody can say for certain. But bear in mind that the butcher lived, and still lives, barely twenty yards away from the Alfanos. At night they could do as they pleased; the roads around there have hardly any traffic in the daytime, so imagine at night. But then the story reached Don Balduccio’s ears, and he wasn’t at all pleased to hear that the butcher was cuckolding a relative of his, a young man he was particularly fond of.”

“What did he do?”

“The first thing he did was call Dolores.”

“What did he say to her?”

“Nobody knows. But Di Gregorio says you can imagine. And he’s right. In fact, four days later, Dolores left for Colombia, telling everyone she was going to see her mother, who was unwell.”

“And what about Pecorini?”

“Chief, I’m going to preface this the same way Di Gregorio did for me: This is all only gossip, conjecture, surmise.”

“Let’s hear it anyway.”

“Pecorini, when he was twenty, raped a seventeen-year-old girl, the daughter of very poor parents. Pecorini’s father paid the girl’s family off, and in return they didn’t report it. But the girl got pregnant. And brought a little boy into the world. Who was called Arturo, like his father, and Manzella, like his mother. And, as these things go, Pecorini became fond of his unrecognized son, helped him to study, get his diploma, and find a job. He’s thirty years old now, with a degree in accounting, married and with a three-year-old little boy, Carmelo.”

“Come on, Fazio! What is this, the Bible?”

“We’re almost there, Chief. One day, when the kid was playing outside the front door of their building, he disappeared.”

“What do you mean, ‘disappeared’?”

“Disappeared, Chief. Vanished. Twenty-four hours later, Arturo Pecorini shut down his butcher shop and left for Catania.”

“And what about the kid?”

“Thirty-six hours later, he was found playing outside the front door of his building.”

“And what’d he say?”