A Beam of Light

by Andrea Camilleri

  He went into the kitchen, prepared the coffee, went into the bathroom, washed his face, returned to the kitchen, drank a mug of black espresso, and fired up a cigarette.

  The telephone rang.

  He let it ring. Then picked up the receiver after the tenth ring.

  12

  “What can I do for you, sir?”

  “First of all, I beseech you to accept my apologies for calling you at this hour. Surely I woke you up, snatching you straight out of the arms of Morpheus.”

  “What makes you so sure I was in the arms of Morpheus?”

  The lawyer got worried that Montalbano, perhaps not knowing who Morpheus was, might have misunderstood and taken offense at the insinuation. After a moment of perplexity, he clarified:

  “I didn’t mean in the least to imply . . . Surely you know that Morpheus was the god of sleep, not a human being in the flesh.”

  “Exactly, counsel. What makes you think I was asleep?”

  “Well, then so much the better. I’m at Punta Raisi airport, about to catch a plane.”

  “Going anywhere interesting?”

  “Rome, for the usual business.”

  Which consisted of speaking with a few indulgent members of parliament or some big-cheese bureaucrats in charge of public contracts, alternating promises with threats.

  “Therefore,” the lawyer continued, “if I hadn’t called you now, I wouldn’t have been able to try you again until after eight o’clock. And I thought that I might no longer find you at home at that hour. And so . . .”

  “You could have called me at the office.”

  “I don’t know whether it would have been advisable to disturb you at police headquarters. You’re always so busy . . .”

  “All right, then. I’m all ears.”

  “I wanted to tell you that we had the pleasure of seeing you on television last night. We were a veritable chorus of wonderment. Are you aware how good-looking you are?”

  “Thanks,” said the inspector. And fuck you and the Cuffaros, he added in his mind.

  “May God preserve your fine health and intelligence for many long years to come,” Guttadauro went on.

  “Thanks,” Montalbano repeated.

  One had to be patient with these kinds of people, who always spoke with contorted pretzel logic, never directly. Sooner or later, however, the lawyer would get to the point.

  “Last night,” the lawyer resumed, “there was a man with us, an elderly peasant of the Cuffaros whom we invite every so often because he keeps us in good spirits with all the marvelous stories he tells. Ah, the age-old peasant culture, now gone forever! This globalization business is destroying our ancient, healthy roots!”

  Montalbano understood the game.

  “You’re making me curious, counsel. I could use a little mood elevation myself. Why don’t you tell me one of these stories?”

  “But of course, with pleasure! So, there was once a lion hunter on whom his fellow hunters decided to play a joke. Having seen a native who’d killed an ass and covered it with a lion’s skin, they bought the animal and hid it amongst the trees. The hunter saw it and shot it. And he had himself photographed with the lion he thought he’d killed. And everyone became convinced that he’d really killed the lion, whereas not only had he not killed the lion, but the lion itself wasn’t even a lion but an ass.”

  “Cute.”

  “Didn’t I tell you? If you only knew how many of these stories he has!”

  “And now, counsel, tell me what you—”

  “I’m terribly sorry, Inspector, but they’ve already started boarding my flight. Take care, and I hope to speak with you again soon.”

  Montalbano smiled, feeling satisfied. The interview had proved to be a good idea.

  It was clear that in speaking of “fellow hunters,” Guttadauro was referring not only to the Cuffaros, but also to the Sinagras, the rival Mafia family.

  They must have called an urgent meeting for the occasion.

  The gist of the argument was that the Mafia had nothing to do with the case, that Savastano was not a Mafia punk (an ass, the lawyer’d said), that he’d been killed by someone not from the Mafia (a native, Guttadauro had specified), and the killing had been made to look like a Mafia hit, when in fact it wasn’t.

  The inspector had intuited all this from the start, but in Guttadauro’s phone call he now had his confirmation.

  The call had surely not been made as a favor to him, but only because the mob had been frightened by his promise of sweeping investigations and wanted to be left in peace.

  So it was a native who murdered Savastano. Translation from Guttadauro’s code: someone from Vigàta who was not in the Mafia.

  He rang Fazio.

  “What is it, Chief?”

  Montalbano told him about Guttadauro’s phone call.

  “So how should we proceed?” Fazio asked.

  “I want Salvatore di Marta in my office at eleven o’clock.”

  “Why so late? Do you have something to do before that?”

  “No. But you do.”

  “What do I have to do?”

  “I want to know everything there is to know about this di Marta.”

  “Already taken care of.”

  One of these days I’m gonna kill him, thought Montalbano.

  But he said only:

  “Then have him come in at nine-thirty. At nine you and I will meet and discuss what to do.”

  He stayed home until half past eight, dawdling about the house in the hope that Marian would call.

  What on earth could have happened to her? He had no explanation for her silence.

  At a certain point he thought of looking in the phone book for the number of the mine where Marian’s brother worked and finding some excuse for asking him for Marian’s number. But he didn’t have the nerve.

  He waited a bit longer, but still no word from Marian. And the more the minutes passed, the more he realized how much he needed to hear her voice. And so, with all the waiting, he ended up not getting to the office until nine-twenty-five.

  “Does di Marta pay the protection racket?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Who does he pay it to?”

  “The land his supermarket sits on is in the area controlled by the Cuffaros.”

  “And who’s their collector?”

  “A man named Ninì Gengo.”

  “Think it’s possible di Marta arranged something with him?”

  Fazio made a wry face.

  “Ninì Gengo is not a killer. He’s a bloodsucking louse who will only matter until the Cuffaros decide he doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “But don’t you think di Marta might have asked Gengo if he knew someone for the job?”

  “It’s possible. But in so doing, di Marta would end up putting his fate in too many other people’s hands.”

  “You’re right.”

  “And if, on top of that, Guttadauro phoned you specifically to tell you they had nothing to do with it . . .”

  “But can we trust the word of a lawyer who’s hand in glove with the Cuffaros?”

  Fazio shrugged and the telephone rang.

  “Chief, ’ere’s ’at man called Martha onna premisses again.”

  “Send him in.”

  Di Marta was in such a state of agitation that he couldn’t keep still for even a second. He squirmed in his chair and was continuously moving his hands, touching the tip of his nose one minute, the crease in his trousers the next, the knot in his tie the next, profusely sweating all the while.

  “I’m in trouble, aren’t I?” he asked the inspector.

  He’d figured it out by himself. So much the better. That would save a lot of time.

  “It’s true you’re not in the best of situations.”

  Di Marta’s
shoulders hunched forward as if an immense weight had just been placed on them. He heaved a sigh so long that Montalbano was afraid his lungs might burst.

  “I beg you, please, Signor di Marta, to try and remain as calm as possible. And to answer my questions sincerely. Believe me, being sincere could help you a great deal. I also want you to know that this will be a conversation just between us, a private one, so to speak, and it won’t be recorded by my colleague here, Fazio. Is that clear? I have no authorization to make any kind of decision. Otherwise I would have told you to bring your lawyer.”

  Another long sigh.

  “All right.”

  “Can you tell me please where you were the night before last after ten p.m.?”

  “Where do you think? At home.”

  “And was anyone there with you?”

  “No. Loredana is still in the hospital. I think they’re going to discharge her tomorrow.”

  “Tell me what you did from the afternoon onwards.”

  “I was at the supermarket until closing time, then—”

  “Just a minute. When you were at the supermarket, did you receive anyone into your private office?”

  “Yes. A detergent representative and Signora Molfetta, who comes in weekly to pay an installment of her bill with us.”

  “Nobody else?”

  “Nobody else.”

  “Go on.”

  “At closing time, I stayed on alone to do some bookkeeping, and then I went to deposit the day’s receipts at the bank in Vicolo Crispi, and after that I went home.”

  “What time was that, more or less?”

  “Nine-thirty.”

  “You didn’t eat dinner?”

  “Yes, that morning the cleaning lady made me something to eat later for supper.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What did she make for you to eat?”

  Di Marta gave him a puzzled look.

  “I . . . don’t remember.”

  “Why not?”

  “I was thinking of other things.”

  “And after dinner?”

  “I watched TV and then went to bed around midnight.”

  Therefore he had no one who could testify that he’d stayed home the whole evening and night. And this was a point against him. He didn’t have what they call a verifiable alibi.

  “Why did you beat your wife?”

  The question, fired point-blank, made di Marta lurch in his chair.

  But he didn’t answer.

  Montalbano decided to use his imagination a little.

  “We know that Signora Loredana told the doctors she fell down the stairs. Clearly she wanted to avoid having to report you. But the doctors didn’t believe her; they claimed her injuries were not consistent with a fall. And so they filed a report themselves. I’ve got it right here in the drawer. Would you like to see it?”

  “No.”

  The ruse had worked.

  “Was it you who beat her up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “After I found out here that she’d been raped, when we got home I asked her why she hadn’t admitted it. I found her answers unconvincing. So unconvincing that I started to think she knew the attacker and wanted in some way to protect him. After which I lost my head and started hitting her.”

  “So it was only in anger?”

  “Yes.”

  Montalbano frowned sternly.

  “Signor di Marta, I advised you, for your own good, to tell the truth.”

  “But I am . . .”

  “No, you’re not. You wanted your wife to tell you the name of the man who robbed and raped her.”

  Di Marta sat there for a moment in silence. Then, as if he’d made up his mind, he replied decisively.

  “Yes.”

  Montalbano realized that from that moment forward, di Marta would be as cooperative as possible.

  “And did she tell you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now you tell me.”

  “Carmelo Savastano.”

  “How did you react?”

  “I . . . broke down and cried. Then . . . I realized what I’d done and I took Loredana to the hospital.”

  “Were you thinking of taking revenge on Savastano?”

  “I wanted to kill him. And I would have if somebody hadn’t beaten me to it.”

  “How were you planning to kill him?”

  “By shooting him the next time I saw his face. Ever since Loredana told me his name, I’ve been going around with a gun.”

  Montalbano and Fazio exchanged a quick glance. Fazio stood up.

  “Do you have the gun with you now?”

  “Of course.”

  “Stand up slowly with your hands in the air,” the inspector ordered him.

  Di Marta was halfway up when Fazio grabbed him and removed the pistol from the back pocket of his trousers. He removed the cartridge clip.

  “There’s one shot missing,” he said.

  He raised the barrel to his nose and sniffed.

  “Have you fired this recently?” he asked.

  “Yes,” di Marta admitted. “I kept that gun forever in a drawer in my bedside table, and since I’d never used it, never taken it out of the box, I wanted to test it, to see if it worked.”

  “When did you test it?” asked Montalbano.

  “The other evening, in the parking lot behind the supermarket, after everyone had gone home.”

  “Try to be more specific. You mean the same evening Savastano was murdered?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have a license to carry a weapon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please sit back down.”

  The strange thing was that the more they spoke, the less nervous di Marta became.

  “Let’s go back a little in time. Feel up to it?”

  “I can try.”

  “When you first fell in love with your wife, Loredana, she worked for you at the supermarket as a checkout girl, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ve learned that at the time she was the girlfriend of Carmelo Savastano. Did you also know this?”

  “Yes. Loredana herself told me, once I succeeded in winning her trust. But they weren’t getting along very well anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “Savastano mistreated her. And she would come into my office in tears and pour her heart out to me. I’ll tell you a few episodes. One day he spat into the plate she was eating from and forced her to keep eating. Another time he wanted her to prostitute herself to a guy he owed money to. And when Loredana refused, he took a pair of scissors and cut up her clothes. She’d pretty much made up her mind to leave him, but he would blackmail her.”

  “How?”

  “By threatening to circulate compromising photos of her. And even a little video they filmed in the early days of their relationship.”

  “I see. And what did you do?”

  “I convinced myself that I had to confront Savastano.”

  “Weren’t you afraid that, if you found yourself alone with someone like that . . .”

  “Of course I was afraid. But by then, Loredana was everything to me.”

  “Were you carrying a weapon when you went to confront him?”

  “No. It didn’t even occur to me.”

  “What did you say to him?”

  “I got straight to the point. I wanted to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible. I asked him how much he wanted for leaving Loredana, and to give me all the photos and everything else. I knew he needed money. He was a regular at the gambling dens and didn’t have much luck.”

  “Where did this meeting take place?”

  “He’d suggest
ed his place, but I told him I would only meet him out in the open. We met on the jetty.”

  “Did he accept your offer?”

  “Yes, after shilly-shallying a bit.”

  “How much was it?”

  “Two hundred thousand in cash, a hundred upon his delivery of the material requested, and a hundred on the eve of my marriage to Loredana.”

  “Why wait until the marriage?”

  “So that I could be certain that he wouldn’t harass Loredana, who’d gone to stay with her parents during the wait. It would have cost him half the sum agreed upon, so it wasn’t in his best interest. Then if, after the wedding, he got it into his head to reappear, I would defend Loredana myself.”

  “Did he abide by the agreement?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you still have the material Savastano turned over to you?”

  “No, I destroyed it.”

  “Assuming everything you’ve just told us is true, what reason do you think Savastano could have had for robbing and raping your wife?”

  Montalbano was expecting the answer di Marta gave.

  “I think he was put up to it.”

  “By whom?”

  “By Valeria Bonifacio.”

  “And what motive would Signora Bonifacio have for—”

  “Because she hates me. To do me harm. Because she’s jealous of Loredana’s love for me.”

  “But do you have any proof at all to support this claim?”

  “No.”

  Montalbano stood up. Di Marta likewise.

  “Thank you. I don’t need you anymore.”

  Di Marta seemed doubtful.

  “So I can go?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what happens next?”

  “I’m going to talk with the public prosecutor. He’ll decide on the next step to take.”

  “What about my gun?”

  “It stays here. Anyway, what do you need it for? Savastano’s dead now.”

  Fazio showed di Marta out. When he returned, Montalbano asked:

  “So, what do you think?”

  “Chief, he’s either a clever rogue playing a difficult game, or just some poor bastard who’s up to his neck in shit. What do you think?”

  “I think exactly the same as you. But in the meantime we should assign ourselves some homework for the vacation. While I go and talk to Tommaseo, you should take di Marta’s gun to Forensics. They’ve still got the bullet that killed Savastano, and we can see if it was shot by this gun. Then you have to try to find something out.”