He went to Enzo’s to eat, feeling rather satisfied at finding, he thought, a key to understanding a little about the behavior of the girl who called herself Vanna. He was now almost convinced that she had acted the way she did as part of a precise plan she had devised in her head when she learned that he was Inspector Montalbano.
Therefore it wasn’t just a silly game, but something serious. Quite serious.
At any rate, he felt-even if he didn’t exactly know why-that he was acting the way she would have wanted him to.
On the other hand, he had nothing to congratulate himself about when it came to the corpse in the dinghy. Things were practically still at square one. The inability to identify the corpse was paralyzing everything. Whoever had smashed the guy’s face in had achieved his purpose.
And if the guy was a foreigner, there was no point searching all the hotels and inns in Vigàta, Montelusa, and environs. That wouldn’t only take a lot of time, but the question would remain unchanged: How do you identify someone without papers who no longer has a face?
And if by chance he was a local, how come nobody had reported him missing?
In the trattoria, the inspector did find some consolation. Fish was back on Enzo’s menu, and to make up for his forced abstinence of the day before, Montalbano gorged himself. He ordered a mixed fry of mullet and calamari that could have fed half the staff at the station.
As a result, a walk along the jetty to the lighthouse became an absolute necessity. This time, too, he went out of his way, passing by the Vanna and the Ace of Hearts, which still were side by side.
No sooner had he passed them than he heard laughter and shouting behind him. He turned around to look as he kept walking.
At that moment Livia Giovannini, the Vanna’s owner, and Captain Sperlì were descending the gangway of the Ace of Hearts as a man of considerable size, a colossus a good six-foot-three-inches tall with shoulders like a truck and red hair, waved bye-bye to them from the cruiser’s deck. The Ace of Hearts might be a huge boat, but the guy probably had to walk with his head bent when he was below decks. Then the lady and her captain started going up the gangway to the Vanna.
When he got to the flat rock under the lighthouse, the inspector sat down, fired up a cigarette, and started thinking about what he had just seen.
What were the owner and captain of the Vanna doing aboard the Ace of Hearts?
Perhaps just a courtesy visit, a good-neighborly sort of thing? Was it common practice for those kinds of people to do that? Given the time of day, it was also quite possible, even likely, that the Vanna people had been invited to lunch.
Or did they all know each other from before? Were they old friends? Or business associates or something similar?
There was only one way to find out: try to learn more about the Ace of Hearts.
This, however, would mean that the investigation, instead of becoming smaller and more focused, would expand by involving more people. Which was the worst thing that could happen to an ongoing investigation.
At any rate, the only way to get any information on the Ace of Hearts was to ask Laura, whom he had something else to ask as soon as possible.
Laura! Man, was she ever…
Once again he got lost in his thoughts about her. He didn’t like the fact that the moment she came to mind, he could no longer concentrate on anything else. In his head there was only her: the way she walked, the way she laughed… Deep down, he felt a little ashamed of this. It didn’t seem proper for a man his age. But he couldn’t do anything about it.
Once inside the car, instead of going to the station, he took the road to Montelusa. Pulling up in front of the Forensic Medicine Institute, he got out and went inside.
“Is Dr. Pasquano here?”
“He’s here, for what it’s worth.”
Which, translated, meant: He’s here, but it is not advisable to go and bother him.
“Listen, all I need is a copy of the memo the doctor wrote after performing the autopsy on the disfigured corpse.”
“I can get that for you myself, but you should know you can’t take it away with you.”
“I only need some information from it, which I can get here, on the spot, right in front of you. Please do me this favor.”
“All right, but don’t tell the doctor.”
Half an hour later, he pulled up in front of the broadcasting studios of the Free Channel, one of the two local television stations.
“Is Zito in?”
“He’s in his office,” said the secretary, who knew Montalbano well.
The inspector and Zito embraced. They were old friends and were always genuinely happy to see each other.
Montalbano gave him the information he had copied down. Height, weight, hair color, width of shoulders, length of legs, teeth… Zito promised to make the announcement on the eight o’clock evening news and the midnight edition, which were the two most watched. Anyone who happened to call the studio in response would be told to contact the Vigàta police directly.
Back at the office, he found Fazio waiting for him, looking like a beaten dog.
“What’s wrong?”
“We’re fucked, Chief!”
“You think that’s news? What’s so unusual about that? I happen to believe I’ve been fucked since birth. So, a little more fucked, a little less fucked, makes no difference… What’s this about?”
“Shaikiri.”
“Tell me everything.”
“Well, just by chance, as I was on my way to eat, I saw Digiulio, Ricca, and Alvarez going into Giacomino’s tavern. So I waited a few minutes and went in myself, and I sat down at a table not far from theirs. When I heard them talking about Zizì, I pricked up my ears. And you know what?”
“If it’s bad news, I don’t want to hear it. But tell me anyway.”
“Zizì was arrested last night.”
Montalbano cursed.
“By whom?”
“The carabinieri.”
“For what?”
“Apparently, as they were heading back to the ship last night, Zizì saw a carabinieri squad car parked near the port. He’d been drinking a lot, and he went up to the car, unbuttoned his trousers, and pissed on it.”
“What, is the guy crazy? And were there carabinieri inside the car?”
“Yup.”
“And what happened?”
“Well, as they were arresting him, he managed to punch one of the carabinieri.”
Montalbano started cursing again.
“What should we do?” Fazio asked.
“What can we do? We can’t very well phone the carabinieri and tell them to let him go because I need him! Listen, try and make friends with Ricca. It’s the only move we can make at this point.”
He and Laura had agreed the previous evening that she would call him at the office around seven o’clock, but it was now almost eight and he still hadn’t heard from her. Since this time he’d had her give him her cell phone number, after a bit of mental tug-of-war with himself, he called her up.
“Montalbano here.”
“I recognized your voice.”
She’d said it without any enthusiasm at all.
“Did you forget that you-”
“No, I didn’t forget.”
Damn, was she ever expansive!
“Too busy?”
“No.”
“So then why didn’t you-”
“I’d decided not to call you.”
“Oh.”
Silence fell.
And suddenly Montalbano was gripped by a hysterical fear that they’d been cut off. It was idiotic, but he could do nothing about it. Whenever he thought he’d lost his telephone connection, he went into a terrible panic, like a child abandoned in a starship adrift in space.
“Hello! Hello!” he started yelling.
“Don’t shout! I’m here!” she said.
“Can you explain to me why-”
“Not over the telephone.”
“Try.”
“I said no.”
“Well then let’s meet, if you don’t mind! There’s also something I have to ask you about the Vanna.”
Another pause.
This time, however, Montalbano heard her breathing.
“Do you want to have dinner together?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“But not at your house.”
“All right. We can go wherever you like.”
“Then let’s go to that restaurant in Montereale you mentioned to me.”
“All right. Let’s do this: you come here to the station, and we can take my car to-”
“No. Just tell me how to get to this restaurant. We can meet there. But give me about an hour; I still need to change.”
What had got into Laura? Why had her mood changed so drastically? He couldn’t figure it out.
About ten minutes later, the phone rang.
“Ahh Chief Chief! Ahh Chief!”
Bad sign. Whenever Catarella intoned these lamentations, it meant that Mister C’mishner, as he reverently called him, was on the line.
“Does the commissioner want me?” Montalbano asked.
“Yessir, Chief! An’ iss rilly urgint!”
“Tell him I’m not in my office.”
The commissioner was likely to tell him to come to Montelusa, which would make him miss his appointment with Laura.
“Matre santa, Chief!” Catarella wailed.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Wha’ss wrong izzat when I gotta tella lie to hizzoner the c’mishner, iss like I’m c’mittin’ a mortal sin!”
“So just go and confess!”
Forty-five minutes later, he was about to get up and leave when Fazio came in.
“Chief, I have a very good friend who’s a carabiniere, and I took the liberty of-”
“What did you do?”
“I asked him what they planned to do with Shaikiri.”
“And how did you explain your interest in him?”
“I told him he was a friend of mine and that whenever he drank he lost his head, and I apologized for him.”
“And what did the guy say?”
“They released him at five o’clock this afternoon. He was charged with assault and resisting arrest. What should I do? Go look for him at Giacomino’s tavern?”
“Go there at once and forget about Ricca.”
He’d already stood up when the phone rang. To answer or not to answer? That was the question. Prudence suggested that it was best not to answer, but since he had given Laura this very number, he thought it might be her saying she had changed her mind, and so he picked up the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Ah, Inspector Montalbano, what luck to find you in your office! Did you just get back?”
“This very moment.”
It was that humongous pain in the ass Dr. Lattes, called Lattes e mieles, chief of the commissioner’s cabinet, who, among other things, was convinced that Montalbano was married with children.
“Well, my friend, the commissioner has gone and left me with the task of contacting you.”
“What can I do for you, Doctor?”
“We urgently need to do a complete review of documents lost during that sort of flood that damaged your offices the other day.”
“I see.”
“Would you have an hour or so, or perhaps an hour and a half, to devote to this?”
“When?”
“Right now. It’s something we could even do over the phone. You need only have a list of the lost documents at hand. Let’s start by doing a summary check, which will later serve as…”
Montalbano felt lost. He would have to cancel the dinner engagement with Laura!
No, he would not submit to this revenge of the bureaucracy.
But how? How would he ever wriggle out of this?
Perhaps only a good improvised performance could save him. He would do the tragic-actor thing, and he got off to a flying start.
“No! No! Alas! Woe is me! I don’t have the time!” he said in a despairing voice.
It made an immediate impression on Lattes.
“Good God, Inspector! What’s wrong?”
“I just now got a call from my wife!”
“And?”
“She phoned me from the hospital, alas!”
“But what happened?”
“It’s my youngest, little Gianfrancesco. He’s very sick and I must immediately-”
Dr. Lattes didn’t hesitate for a second.
“For heaven’s sake, Montalbano! Go, and hurry! I shall pray to the Blessed Virgin for your little… What did you say his name was?”
Montalbano couldn’t remember. He blurted out the first name that came to mind.
“Gianantonio.”
“But didn’t you say Gianfrancesco?”
“You see? I can’t even think straight! Gianantonio is the oldest, and he’s fine, thank God!”
“Go! Go! Don’t waste any more time! And good luck! And tomorrow I want a full report, don’t forget.”
Montalbano was off like a rocket to Montereale.
But after barely a mile and a half, the car stalled. There wasn’t a drop of gasoline left in the tank. Fortunately there was a filling station a couple of hundred yards up the road.
He got out of the car, grabbed a jerry can from the trunk, ran to the gas station, filled up the can, paid, ran back to the car, poured in the gas, started up the car, stopped at the station again, filled up the tank, and drove off-cursing the saints all the while.
When he got to the restaurant, all sweaty and out of breath, Laura was already sitting at a table, nervously waiting for him.
“Five minutes more and I would have left,” she said, cold as a slab of ice.
Owing perhaps to the ordeal he had gone through to get there more or less on time, her words had the immediate effect of seriously pissing him off. He was unable to control himself, and out of his mouth came a declaration he would never have thought himself capable of.
“Well, then I’ll just leave myself.”
And he turned his back, went out of the restaurant, got in his car, and drove home to Marinella.
He wanted nothing more than to get into the shower and stay there for as long as it took to wash away his agitation.
Twenty minutes later, as he was drying himself off, he thought again with a cooler head about what he had done, and realized he’d committed an act of colossal stupidity. Because he absolutely needed Laura’s help if he was going to get anywhere in the investigation. Indeed, the only way Mimì Augello could come into contact with La Giovannini was through Laura.
That was what happened when you mixed personal matters with work.
He decided he would call her first thing in the morning and apologize.
He no longer felt hungry. Perhaps his appetite would return if he went out for a few minutes onto the veranda and breathed some sea air. He had noticed, on the way back from the restaurant, that it was less chilly than the previous evening and there wasn’t a breath of wind. So he went outside with only his underpants on. He flicked on the light for the veranda from the inside, grabbed his cigarettes, and opened the French door. And froze. Not because it was cold outside, but because there was Laura, standing before him, speechless, eyes lowered.
Apparently she had knocked on the door when he was in the shower and he hadn’t heard it, and so, knowing he must be at home, she had walked around the house to enter from the side facing the beach.
“Forgive me,” she said.
And she looked up. At once her grave expression vanished and she started laughing.
At that very same moment, as if seeing his reflection in her eyes, Montalbano realized he was in his underpants.
“Ahhh!” he screamed.
And he dashed back to the bathroom as if in a silent film.
He was so upset, so confused, that the comedy continued when, as he was standing and putting his trousers on, he slipped on the wet tiles and fell on his ass to the floor.
When at last he was able to think straight again, he emerged and went out to the veranda.
Laura was sitting on the bench, smoking a cigarette.
“I guess we’ve just had a quarrel,” she said.
“Yeah. I apologize, but, you see…”
“Let’s stop apologizing to each other. I owe you an explanation.”
“No you don’t.”
“Well, I’m going to explain anyway, because I think it’s necessary. Have you got any more of that wine?”
“Of course.”
He got up and went out, then came back with a new bottle and two glasses. Laura guzzled a whole glass before speaking.
“I had no intention of calling you today and had promised myself that, if you called me, I would say I wasn’t up to seeing you.”
“Why?”
“Let me finish.”
But Montalbano insisted.
“Look, Laura, if there was anything I said or did yesterday that may have offended you, for whatever reason-”
“But I wasn’t offended at all. On the contrary.”
On the contrary? What did she mean? He’d best sit tight and hear what she had to say.
“I didn’t want to see you because I was afraid I’d seem ridiculous. And anyway, it wouldn’t have been right.”
Montalbano felt dazed.
And he feared that anything he might say would be the wrong thing. He didn’t understand what was happening.
“And so I told myself that it would be a mistake for us to keep seeing each other. It’s the first time in my life this sort of thing has happened to me. It’s humiliating and demoralizing. I’m completely helpless and can’t do anything about it. My will counts for nothing. And in fact, when you called me, I didn’t know… Help me.”
She stopped, poured herself another glass, and drank half of it. As she brought it to her lips, Montalbano saw her eyes glisten, brimming with tears.