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them.”
    “How?”
    “If they’re luxury cars, there’s people that buy them to take them abroad.”
    “And if they’re not?”
    “There’s always car wreckers who pay good money for spare parts.”
    “Do you know any?”
    “Any what?”
    “Car wreckers.”
    “That’s not my line.”
    “Okay. Have anything else to tell me?”
    “Nah.”
    “All right, you can go. Thanks, Pasquà.”
    “My respects, Inspector.”

    The inspector had realized immediately that the burglaries were the work of outsiders, skilled professionals. Vigàta’s burglars were less sophisticated; they just broke down the door and went inside, but never when there were people at home, and never in a million years would they have thought to make a pole like the one used in the first burglary.
    The band must have consisted of four people: three outsiders working in the field and a fourth who was the brains of the outfit. And who was perhaps the only one living in Vigàta. Once the job was done, the others quite probably went back to where they came from.
    Montalbano’s nose and experience told him this was going to be a difficult case.
    His eye fell on the sheet of paper Fazio had left with him, with the list of the Peritores’ friends’ names. There were eighteen in all.
    He started skimming it distractedly until the fourth name made him jump in his chair.
    Emilio Lojacono, attorney-at-law.
    The guy who was at his country house with his mistress when his place in town was robbed in the first burglary.
    Montalbano kept reading, paying closer attention.
    At the seventeenth name, he gave another start.
    Dr. Ersilia Vaccaro.
    Lawyer Lojacono’s mistress.
    A lightning bolt shot across his brain.
    An illogical intuition that the next burglary would surely involve one of the remaining sixteen names on the list.
    And therefore what Fazio reported to him on the Peritores’ friends would prove extremely important.
    At that exact moment, Fazio rang.
    “Chief, I wanted to tell you—”
    “Just listen to me first. On that list of the Peritores’ friends, did you notice—”
    “—the names of Lojacono the lawyer and Dr. Vaccaro? Absolutely! It was the first thing I saw!”
    “And what do you think?”
    “That the name of the next person to be burgled is on that list.”
    Oh, well.
    He’d wanted to look brilliant, but it hadn’t worked.
    It was one of those days where he was destined to be wrong-footed by everybody.
    On the other hand, Fazio often arrived at the same conclusions as him.
    “What did you want to tell me?”
    “Well, I found out that Livia is here with you.”
    “Yes.”
    “My wife would love it if you came to dinner at our place tomorrow night. If that’s all right with you.”
    Why wouldn’t it be all right with him?
    On top of everything else, Signora Fazio was an excellent cook, a hardly negligible fact.
    “Thanks, I’ll tell Livia. We’d love to come. See you in the morning.”

    “Catarella!”
    “Yessir, Chief!”
    “Come to my office, on the double.”
    He hadn’t even set the receiver down before Catarella materialized before him, bolt upright, at attention.
    “Cat, I need to ask you to do something that shouldn’t take you more than five minutes at the computer.”
    “Chief, I’d sit in fronna’a’ ka-pewter f’r a hunnert years f’yiz, sir!”
    “I want you to make me a list of all the car wreckers in our province who’ve been charged with receiving.”
    Catarella looked flummoxed.
    “I don’ unnastan’, Chief.”
    “All of it or part of it?”
    “Part of it.”
    “Which one?”
    “The ting about risseevin’.”
    “Receiving?”
    “Yeah. Wha’ss it mean?”
    “It means buying or receiving stolen goods.”
    “Okay, Chief, bu’ if iss bad, why’s it goods?”
    “Never mind,” said Montalbano, handing him a piece of paper with the word
Receivers
written at the top. “Listen, get Fazio for me, would you?”

    The telephone rang.
    “What is it, Chief?”
    “Do you remember the