In a vacant lot where goats used to graze and where drug dealers and prostitutes now do their business, the body of engineer Luparello is found. The coroner's verdict was natural death. But Inspector Montalbano, as honest as he is cunning, does not want to close the case, although the judge, the police chief and the bishop are pushing him to do so. The Inspector fearlessly opposes the “establishment”, where politics and organized crime have no clear outlines and, flowing like water into each other, take the form of the vessel that contains them.