Montalbano's First Case and Other Stories

by Andrea Camilleri

  Another ignoble line, which made him feel mortified, but he was no poet and, at any rate, it served its purpose. Rosanna chewed the bread and swallowed.

  “Water,” she said.

  The inspector filled a plastic cup and handed it to her.

  “Think you can eat by yourself now?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Montalbano gently stroked her hair and went out, leaving the door still open.

  He’d had the right idea. The girl was in touch with life again. And sooner or later, with the right amount of patience and delicacy on his part, she would make up her mind to tell him what she had wanted to do with the gun and, most importantly, who had given it to her. He let half an hour go by and then went back into the holding cell. Rosanna had eaten everything. The plate looked like it had been washed.

  “Use the plastic bag,” he said.

  The girl emptied the bag of her underwear, and put the dishes and cutlery in it. She kept the bottle, which was still half-full, and a cup.

  “Put the bread in too.”

  “Can I go to the bathroom?”

  “Go.”

  Montalbano grabbed the bag, went out of the station, and threw it into a dumpster not far away. He killed a little more time smoking a cigarette in the quiet night. When he returned, he found Rosanna sitting calmly on the cot. She must have cleaned herself up quite thoroughly, since she smelled of soap. She had even washed her underwear and had spread it out to dry on the back of one of the chairs. But she had a strange, almost mischievous look in her eye.

  “Rosanna is a lovely name,” said the inspector.

  “Only the first part.”

  “You only like the first part of your name? Rosa? Because it’s a flower?”

  He remembered the petalless flower in the envelope she kept in her purse.

  “Nossir. Because it’s a color.”

  “Do you like colors?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know why. Colors make me remember things.”

  He decided to change the subject. Perhaps the right moment had come.

  “Do you want to tell me where you got the gun?”

  The girl suddenly clammed up. Raising her knees to her chin, she wrapped her arms around her legs and squeezed. Her eyes started staring into space again. Montalbano realized he’d lost. Or lost only part of the battle, since he’d managed to make preliminary contact.

  “Good night,” he said.

  She didn’t reply. He picked up the empty chair and took it away with him. He then locked the door, purposely making as much noise as possible.

  Peering through the spy hole, he had a surprise: Big round tears were falling from Rosanna’s eyes. She wept silently, without sobbing, thus all the more desperately.

  He sat out on the veranda for about an hour, smoking one cigarette after another, obsessing about Rosanna. He was about to go to bed when the phone rang. It was Mery.

  “What do you say I come see you on Friday?”

  “Damn! I’ve been summoned to Palermo on Friday!”

  The lie had come out by itself, without his brain being able to stop it. The fact was that he wanted to devote himself entirely, without any distractions, to Rosanna. Mery seemed disappointed. Montalbano consoled her by saying that maybe, in the coming week, he could get away to Catania for a day. He slept badly, tossing and turning all night.

  The following morning he had just turned off the shower when a strange thing happened to him that had never happened before. He had the impression that someone, hidden somewhere, had taken his picture with a flash. And just as he was thinking of a specific statement the girl had made—“Colors make me remember things”—a sort of fever came over him. Still naked, he went over to the telephone. It was seven o’clock in the morning.

  “Montalbano here.”

  “What is it, Inspector?”

  Fazio’s voice sounded worried.

  “Do you know anyone at the courthouse in Montelusa?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want you to be there the moment it opens. I want a list of all the judges and prosecutors. Right away. First and last names only. From both the criminal and civil courts. That’ll be our first move.”

  “What’s the second?”

  “If I’m wrong, you’ll go back there tomorrow and get a list of everyone who works at the courthouse, even the toilet cleaners.”

  Then he started dawdling about the house. On purpose. He wouldn’t have been able to stand waiting at the station for Fazio to return with the list. Around half-past nine he decided to call in.

  “Yes, Inspector, Fazio arrived just a few minutes ago.”

  He dashed out the door.

  He found the name: Emanuele Rosato, civil court judge. Opening the drawer, he took out three things that had been in Rosanna’s purse and put them in his pocket. Then he called Fazio.

  “Get the key to the holding cell and come with me.”

  The girl was sitting as usual. She seemed calm and rested. Being incarcerated seemed to do her good. She first looked at the men without curiosity, but must have intuited at once from the inspector’s face that there was some new development. And this made her tense up visibly. Montalbano pulled the little bottle of pink nail polish from his pocket and tossed it onto the cot. Then the little piece of pink elastic. Then the dried-up rose. Fazio didn’t know what the hell was going on and looked first at the inspector and then at the girl.

  “Colors make me remember things,” said Montalbano.

  Rosanna was as tense as a bow.

  “Wasn’t the first part of your name enough to remind you that you were supposed to kill Judge Rosato?”

  Taking both men by surprise, the girl sprang forth. Montalbano guessed her intentions and shielded his face with his hands. But he still fell backwards, belly up and with Rosanna on top of him. And as Fazio grabbed her by the shoulders, trying to pull her off of him, the inspector was rejoicing at all that unleashed fury the way the parched earth rejoices under a violent downpour, because he had been right on target.

  Since it would have been a waste of time to ask Rosanna why she wanted Judge Rosato dead, Montalbano decided at once to go to Montelusa and talk to the judge. Arriving at the courthouse, he got into the usual line, and when he was in front of the information clerk, he asked:

  “Excuse me, could you please tell me where I can find Judge Rosato?”

  “You’re asking me?” was his astonishing reply.

  Montalbano immediately felt himself getting upset.

  “You want to get wise with me? I’m—”

  “I’m not getting wise with you and I don’t care who you are. Judge Rosato is with the civil court, if I’m not mistaken, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So go and ask for him at the civil courts.”

  “They’re not here?”

  “They’re not here.”

  “So where are they?”

  “At the old military barracks.”

  Now, if he asked in turn where the old military barracks were, the guy was liable to reply with the same mocking tone, and the whole thing would end in a row and maybe a few boxed ears.

  Montalbano went out and saw a uniformed municipal cop. The old military barracks was near the train station. He went there on foot. There were hundreds of people going in and out of the enormous main door. It looked like a station of the London Underground. Was it possible that half of these people were suing the other half? The inspector got the answer to his query when he read the shiny plaques on either side of the door: Civil Courts, State Corps of Forest Rangers, The Dante Alighieri Society, Municipal Tax Office, Provincial Draft Office, Giosuè Carducci Lyceum, Francesco Rondolino Charitable Association, Archaeological Heritage Administration, Protest Office, and the highly mysterious Burea
u of Reimbursement. Who was reimbursing whom? And why? He went inside despairing of ever being able to meet with Judge Rosato. But then he immediately saw a sign that said that the civil court was on the second floor, which one reached by way of Stairway A. While still on the stairs, he asked the first person he came across where he could find the judge.

  “Second door on the right.”

  He shoved his way through the crowd and reached the second door on the right, which was open. He realized he was lost. The room must formerly have been the mess hall of the barracks or some sort of exercise room. It was vast. Every four or five yards there was a small table covered with paper and surrounded by howling people, though it was unclear whether they were lawyers, plaintiffs, or condemned souls from some circle of Dante’s hell. The judges were invisible, hidden behind all the paper; at most one could see the top half of their heads. There were dozens and dozens of them, and just as many tables. What to do? Montalbano walked with a military step—since he was in a barracks—towards one of the tables closest to him and in a loud voice, so that he could be heard above the yelling, which was worse than at the fish market, he commanded:

  “Stop! Police!”

  It was his only hope. Everyone froze and looked at him, turning into a sort of hyperrealist sculpture group that could have been titled: At the Civil Court.

  “I want to know where Judge Rosato is!”

  “I’m here,” said a voice practically between his legs.

  He’d been lucky.

  “What can I do for you?” the judge asked, invisible behind the paper piled up on his table.

  “I’m Inspector Montalbano of Vigàta Police. I’d like to speak to you.”

  “Right now?”

  “If possible.”

  “The hearing is postponed until further notice,” the judge’s voice called out.

  A chorus of curses, insults, obscenities, and prayers rang out.

  “This has been going on for eight years!”

  “This isn’t justice!”

  But the judge was not to be swayed. Lawyers and clients walked about, beside themselves with rage.

  The judge, who had half stood up, sat back down and thus disappeared entirely from Montalbano’s field of vision.

  “Please go ahead,” he said.

  “Listen, Your Honor, I don’t feel like talking to a stack of file folders. Couldn’t we go somewhere else?”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know, maybe to a nearby café.”

  “They’re all packed with lawyers. Wait. I have an idea.”

  Montalbano saw the judge’s hands grab files, folders, binders, and stacks of paper held together with strings and arrange it all on the table in such a way as to form a sort of barricade with a trench behind it.

  “Grab a chair and come back here with me.”

  The inspector obeyed. Indeed they were completely hidden, so that nobody on the other side could see them. Their knees touched. Judge Rosato disappointed Montalbano. On his way there, he had imagined a scenario in which three years ago, Judge Rosato (tall, slender, elegant, a little gray at the temples, puffing on a long cigarette holder, a sort of photo-comic-book seducer) had taken advantage of Rosanna the maid, getting her pregnant, and the girl now wanted revenge. Yes, but why wait three years? The real Judge Rosato, not the one the inspector had fantasized, was over sixty, unkempt, short, completely bald, and wore glasses over an inch thick. Montalbano realized that, to save time, the best approach was to use the technique of the ram—that is, to ram the point home from the start.

  “We’ve arrested a girl who was planning to kill you.”

  “Oh my god! Kill me?!”

  The judge leapt out of his chair, provoking a small but noisy landslide of binders at the western end of the trench. He was immediately drenched in sweat. Hand trembling, he took off his steamed-up glasses. He wanted to ask questions but was unable. His mouth was trembling too wildly. Judge Rosato was not the sort of hero that a trench called for.

  “Do you have any male children?” asked the inspector.

  This might be the solution.

  “No. T . . . two g . . . girls. M . . . Milena lives in S . . . Sondrio, she’s a lawyer. Giu . . . Giuliana is a pediatrician in Turin.”

  “How long have you been at the Civil Court of Montelusa?”

  “Basically forever.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “In Vigàta. I get around with my car.”

  “Have you ever had a maid named Rosanna Monaco working for you?”

  “Never,” the judge said at once.

  “How can you say it so—”

  “We’ve never had a maid. My wife hates them, for no particular reason.”

  The judge had recovered a little and was now able to ask a question.

  “Is this . . . Rosanna Monaco the girl who wanted to kill me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she tell you why, for Chrissake?”

  “No.”

  “But . . . does she even know me?”

  “I don’t think she’s ever seen you.”

  “Then somebody must have put her up to it!”

  “I agree.”

  “But who?”

  Judge Rosato began to recite a litany, a sort of synopsis of his life.

  “I have never quarreled or argued with anybody. As a man I prefer to get along with everyone. My wife is a saint except for a few little obsessions, my daughters love me, my sons-in-law respect me, and as a judge I have always dealt with minor civil cases, I have tried to be fair and use common sense. I have never sent anyone to jail, and am now about to retire after a life of hard work . . . And now someone, for reasons unknown to me, wants me dead . . .”

  The judge started weeping. Montalbano let the unhappy man cry.

  “Chief,” Fazio said after the inspector had told him of his talk with the judge, “I’ve got some news. First of all, after you left, the girl calmed down. I guess she’d got it out of her system. And when I asked her what she had against Judge Rosato, she said the judge was a wicked man who had sent someone to jail.”

  “Rosato’s never sent anyone to jail.”

  “I know, Chief, you just told me that. But someone made Rosanna believe he did.”

  “The same person who gave her the revolver.”

  Fazio screwed up his face.

  “That’s just it, Chief.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “While you were in Montelusa, we got a call from the commissioner’s. The ballistics expert says he’s absolutely certain that the weapon we sent him, Rosanna’s revolver, can’t shoot. It looks deadly, but it’s basically scrap metal.

  “Rosanna didn’t know that.”

  “But in my opinion the person who gave her the gun did. Don’t forget the serial number was filed off.”

  “Let me get this straight, Fazio. I get a girl, I persuade her to kill someone who’s got nothing to do with anything, somebody pulled right out of a hat, then I give her a gun that can’t shoot?”

  “Do you think the person who hired her for the murder was the same as the one who gave her the weapon?”

  “Let’s assume for a moment that it is. Why would I give her a bum firearm? Just to amuse myself behind Rosanna’s back? No, it’s too dangerous a game. To create a sensation? Much ado about nothing? And who would have benefited from it? One thing, however, is certain: that to understand anything about this we have to find out who the person behind the girl is. We absolutely must. She told you some things this morning; try to find out more. I won’t show my face. You go and pay her a visit, win her trust, talk to her.”

  “You know what Rosanna is, Inspector? She’s a cat. One of those that lets you scratch her head, purrs and rubs against your legs, and then, all at once, out of the blue, she scratches your hand.”
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  “I can only wish you luck. And we have to move fast. The clock is ticking. We can’t keep the girl in custody any longer than the law allows. We either have to free her or inform the prosecutor.”

  Around five o’clock that afternoon, Montalbano got a phone call he wasn’t expecting.

  “Inspector Montalbano? This is Judge Emanuele Rosato.”

  “How are you, sir?”

  “How do you expect? I’m a mess. At any rate, I wanted to let you know that I keep a notebook in which I note all the legal actions I handle, and their outcomes. I went back and looked at them, which took me a pretty long time. But I think I’ve found something. The girl’s surname is Monaco, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is her father’s name Gerlando?”

  “Yes.”

  The judge heaved a long sigh.

  “I don’t fucking get it,” he muttered.

  Realizing he’d used an obscenity, he excused himself, then made up his mind to say what he’d discovered.

  “A certain Filippo Tamburello who owned a piece of land bordering that of Gerlando Monaco moved the property line forward when remaking a dry wall. It was only a couple of inches, but you know what these peasants are like. After endless arguments, Monaco decided to sue. And you know what? I settled the matter in favor of Gerlando Monaco. So can you tell me why Monaco’s daughter would want to kill me?”

  “Listen, your honor, when does this decision in Monaco’s favor date from?”

  “Over five years ago.”

  That evening, as he was watching television, Montalbano saw the face of the same journalist he had met at the courthouse, Zito. He seemed to be saying sensible, intelligent things. The station he worked for was called the Free Channel. The inspector decided to ask the man to lend him a hand. Wasting no time, he looked for the television studio’s number and, as soon as the evening news report was over, he called them up.

  “Inspector Montalbano here, of Vigàta Police. I’d like to speak to your newsman, Nicolò Zito.

  They put him on straightaway.

  “I remember you from the courthouse, Inspector,” said Zito. “Is there anything I can do for you?”