The Potter's Field by Andrea Camilleri Page B

and see if he can come to the phone.”
    Multiplication table for seven. Complete.
    â€œI’m sorry, but he’s playing and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
    â€œListen, tell him either he comes to the phone, or I’m going to show up at his place at five o’clock in the morning with the police department’s marching band. The program will be: first number, the triumphal march of the Aida ; second number—”
    â€œWait. I’ll go and tell him right away.”
    Multiplication table for eight.
    â€œCan’t a gentleman sit in peace for a few minutes without you always coming along and breaking his balls? Eh? What fucking way of going about things is this? Are you even aware of it? Eh? Why do you need to come scratching around my door all the time? Eh? What the hell do you want?”
    â€œDid you get it out of your system, Doctor?”
    â€œNot entirely. The pain in the ass is great.”
    â€œMay I speak?”
    â€œYes, but then you must vanish from the face of the earth, because if I run into you, I’m going to perform an autopsy without anesthesia.”
    â€œCan you tell me exactly how many pieces the body was cut into?”
    â€œI forget.”
    â€œPlease, Doctor.”
    â€œWait while I do a tally. So, the fingers of both hands and the toes of both feet make twenty . . . then the legs . . . the ears . . . in toto, twenty-nine, no, wait. Thirty pieces.”
    â€œAre you sure? Thirty?”
    â€œAbsolutely sure.”
    That was why they had left one arm attached. Had they cut it off, that would have made thirty-one pieces. Whereas it had to be exactly thirty.
    Like Judas’s thirty pieces of silver.

    He could no longer stand the heat inside the house. He got dressed, put on a heavy jacket, and went out on the veranda to think.
    That they had a Mafia murder on their hands he had become convinced from the moment Pasquano told him the stranger had been killed with one shot to the base of the skull. A typical procedure that connected, with an invisible thread, the worst kind of criminal cruelty with certain methods sanctioned by time-honored military custom.
    But here something else was emerging.
    Whoever killed the stranger was purposely providing the inspector with precise information as to the whys and wherefores of the killing itself.
    Meanwhile, this murder had been committed, or ordered—which amounted to the same thing—by someone who still operated in observance of the rules of the “old” Mafia.
    Why?
    The answer was simple: Because the new Mafia fired their guns pell-mell and in every direction, at old folks and kids, wherever and whenever, and never deigned to give a reason or explanation for what they did.
    With the old Mafia, it was different. They explained, informed, and clarified. Not aloud, of course, or in print. No. But through signs.
    The old Mafia were experts in semiology, the science of signs used to communicate.
    Murdered with a thorny branch of prickly pear placed on the body?
    We did it because he pricked us one too many times with his thorns and troubles.
    Murdered with a rock inside his mouth?
    We did it because he talked too much.
    Murdered with both hands cut off?
    We did it because we caught him with his hands in the cookie jar.
    Murdered with his balls shoved into his mouth?
    We did it because he was fucking someone he shouldn’t have been.
    Murdered with his shoes on his chest?
    We did it because he wanted to run away.
    Murdered with both eyes gouged out?
    We did it because he refused to see the obvious.
    Murdered with all his teeth pulled out?
    We did it because he ate too much.
    And so on merrily in this fashion.
    For this reason, the meaning of the message was immediately clear to Montalbano: We killed him as he deserved, because he betrayed us for thirty pieces of silver, like Judas.
    Thus the logical conclusion was that the murdered stranger was a mafioso, “executed” because he