Game of Mirrors
Page 19
The first thing the inspector did when he got home was to turn on the television. The Free Channel was airing his interview. Then he switched to TeleVigàta. Pippo Ragonese was in the process of commenting on the news item of the day, the arrest of Carlo Nicotra. Poor Zito hadn’t managed to scoop anyone with the story. Apparently the Sinagras had wasted no time informing TeleVigàta of the new development.
. . . it was probably his insane passion that drove Nicotra to murder the two lovers with such ferocity. Arturo Tallarita was brought to the place of his execution in the trunk of Nicotra’s own Mercedes, taken out, goat-tied with a thin steel chain, and put in the backseat of Lombardo’s Suzuki, which was then drenched in gasoline and set on fire. Nicotra wanted to enjoy the horrific spectacle to the bitter end, as the young man struggled to free himself of the chain, merely killing himself slowly while the flames attacked his flesh . . . What words can describe such terrible agony? We will do everything possible to keep you informed of this atrocity . . .
The inspector prayed that Signora Tallarita wasn’t watching TV and turned it off. Everything was going as planned. The Sinagras had abandoned Nicotra to his destiny. And therefore, in order to keep what Ragonese called the “insane passion” thesis alive and safe from any evidence to the contrary, they had to get their hands on the computers and printers in the Lombardo house.
He went and opened the refrigerator. There was nothing. In the oven, however, he found a casserole of pasta ’ncasciata and a nice platter of fried shrimp and calamari. A special treat.
He set the table on the veranda and enjoyed the beautiful evening and good food, taking his time with everything.
Later, he cleared the table, washed up, and rang Livia.
“Since I have to go out later—”
“Where are you going?”
The whole thing was too complicated to explain.
“To the movies.”
“With whom?”
There was a note of alarm in her voice. Surely she thought he was going out with a woman.
“You skipped a line of dialogue.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ll explain. If somebody says they’re going to the movies, the next line is supposed to be: ‘To see what?’ ‘With whom,’ if anything, would be the line you’d say after that.”
“I don’t care what film you’re going to see; I care about who you’re going with.”
“I’m going by myself.”
“I don’t believe you.”
A spat was inevitable.
At half past ten, Mimì Augello rang.
“I’m on my way back to Vigàta. Tommaseo interrogated Nicotra and locked him up. He’ll resume the questioning tomorrow morning at nine. Any news at your end?”
“Not a thing.”
“All right, then I’ll go directly to the station. See you tonight, Salvo.”
Montalbano sat down in the armchair and started watching a film he’d seen before and liked.
The second time around he liked it even more, and he was so engrossed in it that the ringing of the telephone made him start.
It was Fazio.
“Everything okay, Chief? My team’s heading out to Marinella now.”
The inspector looked at his watch. Fifteen minutes to midnight.
“What about Augello?”
“He’s already left, about twenty minutes ago. He worked something out with the Harbor Office—got them to give him a motorized dinghy.”
It was time for Montalbano to get moving as well. He took a good long shower, then put on just a pair of jeans and a shirt. It was too hot to wear anything else. He made a pot of coffee and filled a thermos with it. He took his pistol, stuck it in his waistband, then grabbed his keys and a flashlight. He looked around for his cell phone but couldn’t find it. He started cursing the saints. At last he found it under a newspaper, put it in his shirt pocket, and went out of the house with the thermos in his hand. This time there was no need to wear gloves.
After removing the seals from the front door, he opened it, went inside, and closed the door behind him, hoping no one had seen him from the main road. Once inside, he opened the bedroom window, climbed over the sill, and jumped into the yard. He must have landed badly on his left foot, because he felt a sharp pain in his ankle.
He ran limping to the front door, put the seals back on, climbed back through the window, closed it, went and opened the little room, entered, then locked the door from the inside with a skeleton key.
Lombardo mustn’t suspect anything.
The small room was the same as the last time he’d been in it. The computers and printers were still in their places.
He sat down on the little bed, turned off the flashlight, and started massaging his foot in the dark, thinking bitterly that his days as an athlete were behind him.
He’d dozed off without realizing it, despite all the coffee he’d drunk. Sitting still on a cot in the darkness and total silence induced sleep. The vibration of his cell phone thus had the effect of an electrical charge on him, almost making him fall off the bed. He turned the flashlight on for a split second: it was two thirty. He grabbed his pistol, cocked it, and kept his eyes fixed and ears pricked in the direction of the door, which he couldn’t see.
Then he heard someone walking softly in the hallway. The man hadn’t made a sound coming in. Or at least Montalbano hadn’t heard anything. The door handle turned with a sort of squeak, but the door didn’t open, since it was locked.
Then something incredible happened.
Somebody knocked lightly with his knuckles, and a polite voice said:
“Inspector Montalbano, would you please open the door for me? I lost the key for this room.”
Montalbano froze, paralyzed. The voice, which had a slight Veneto accent, continued.
“I assure you I’m unarmed,” it said.
What had the cleaning woman said? That Lombardo always carried a revolver. The inspector didn’t trust him. Moving about in the dark, he went and flattened himself against the wall beside the door; then, holding the pistol in his left hand, he reached out with his right and, still keeping himself covered, stuck the key in the door and turned it, standing immediately aside.
“You can come in.”
He held the shining flashlight in one hand and the gun in the other.
The door opened slowly and Adriano Lombardo appeared. He had his hands up.
He was tall, blond, and good-looking. And perfectly calm.
“How did you know I was here?” Montalbano asked him.
“No offense, but your trap was too naïve.”
“So why did you come?”
“Simple. To turn myself in. I was abandoned some time ago by the Cuffaros, and now the Sinagras’ men are after me. I’m better off in jail. I haven’t killed anyone, after all.”
“Why do you say the Cuffaros abandoned you?”
“They immediately realized that the plan to take over the Sinagras’ drug circuit was too difficult, and so they left me on my own.”
It was an absurd situation. They were chatting like two old acquaintances in a café.
At that moment they heard a sudden racket in the area of the veranda. It must have been the Sinagras’ men breaking down the planks. Then they heard a voice say:
“So where the fuck is this little room?”
Heavy footsteps were heard in the dining room. But why wasn’t Mimì intervening? Montalbano went out into the hallway, saw the beam of a flashlight coming towards him, and fired. The flashlight went out, and a voice cried:
“Turì, take cover!”
There must have been at least two of them. Montalbano and Lombardo couldn’t let themselves be trapped in the room. The inspector flopped belly down on the floor and fired another shot. But what th
e hell was Mimì waiting for? Inside the room, meanwhile, Lombardo had moved the bed and was busy doing something he couldn’t figure out. The Sinagras’ men were on the move, perhaps preparing to mount an assault.
Then a burst of machine-gun fire came suddenly from the dining room. Too high, but Montalbano realized he was lost. The man with the machine gun took a step forward and let fly another burst. Montalbano raised his pistol and . . .
A sharp, clean shot rang out behind him. The machine gun fell to the floor, and the man who a second before had Montalbano’s fate in his hands did the same without a cry.
“Turì! Turì!” the second man called.
There was no reply. Montalbano distinctly heard his hurried footsteps. The man was running away. The inspector turned around and shone the flashlight. Adriano Lombardo was smiling and holding a precision rifle.
“Put the weapon down.”
“Of course.”
Outside, meanwhile, they heard cries of “Stop! Police!” and a few gunshots.
“Where was it?”
“I kept it hidden in that room. There are some removable bricks under the bed.”
Montalbano had a flash.
“Was it you who fired at your wife when she was in the car with me?”
“Yes, but she wasn’t my wife. She was just someone I’d brought along who I thought might be useful to me. But I would never have killed her. I’m an excellent marksman.”
“So why did you shoot at her?”
“To win your support against the Sinagras, Inspector. And by the way, it was I who told Liliana to try to seduce you. I was sure you would suspect Nicotra and act accordingly, getting him out of my way. Instead you did nothing. Why?”
“I’ll tell you some other time,” said Montalbano.
They heard Mimì calling from the beach.
“Salvo! You can come out now.”
They went out. By the light of the flashlights, Montalbano noticed that Mimì was completely drenched. A short distance away, two uniformed cops were restraining someone.
“We nabbed him. He said you killed his friend.”
“I didn’t. The man standing here, Adriano Lombardo, did. Why’d you guys get here so late?”
“The outboard motor on the dinghy broke down. We rowed for a while, then dove into the water and swam.”
Fazio meanwhile had shown up with two other policemen.
“Mimì, take Lombardo into custody as well and put him in a holding cell. We’ll talk about what to do with him tomorrow. You, Fazio, had better report that I was in a firefight with one person killed. Then confiscate the computers and printers and take them to headquarters. I’m going home to bed. I feel a little tired.”
He arrived at the station at eight thirty the next morning. He felt rested despite the fact that he had slept barely three hours.
“Fazio, I’ve got less than ten minutes. I have to be at Montelusa Prison at nine to talk with Tallarita. Bring me Lombardo and leave me alone with him.”
Lombardo looked as if he hadn’t gotten any sleep on the wooden plank in the holding cell. His clothes were in order. He just had a bit of stubble on his face.
“In a few minutes Inspector Fazio will escort you to the public prosecutor. I unfortunately have another engagement. But I hope to be able to come by midmorning. If you have any important revelations to make, please wait for me to get there. Do you have a lawyer?”
“No, but I want revenge on the Cuffaros. I have a lot to say about them.”
“I imagined you would. I’ll tell Augello to find you a good lawyer.”
“Why are you so interested in me?”
“Because you saved my life. Which I’ll tell the prosecutor. And also because . . .”
He stopped in time. But Lombardo smiled at him and finished his thought.
“Because you owe it to Liliana?”
Montalbano didn’t reply.
He showed up at the prison gate ten minutes late. The chief guard told him to wait and started talking in a low voice into the telephone.
Then he called another guard and ordered him to escort the inspector to the prison warden.
What was this? He didn’t have any time to waste.
“Look, I’m supposed to be having a consultation with—”
“I know, but the warden arranged it this way.”
He knew this warden. His name was Luparelli and he was a perfectly respectable man though a pain in the ass when it came to protocol.
Montalbano found him agitated and in a bad mood.
“You won’t be able to talk to Tallarita.”
“Why not?”
“Something very serious happened. This morning in the showers he slit Nicotra’s throat with a knife. Nobody knows how he got the weapon.”
“Did he kill him?”
“Yes. You see, yesterday he watched Ragonese’s report on television, which went into all the gory details of his son’s death, and so he avenged him. Afterwards, with the knife still in his hand, and threatening everybody around him, he started yelling that he wanted the Narcotics squad and he intended to turn state’s witness. And so I called them, and they came and took him away.”
He’d come all that way for nothing. But he’d achieved the result he wanted just the same. He’d planned to tell Tallarita about the terrible death his son had suffered, to trigger a reaction. But Ragonese had spared him the effort.
Leaving the prison, he got in his car and headed for the office of the public prosecutor, Tommaseo.
Where Lombardo was ready to take the Cuffaros to town.
It was a fine day indeed.
Author’s Note
Unlike many other novels in the Montalbano series, this one did not originate from one or several news items. It’s completely made up. I can therefore say with all the more conviction that all the character names, situations, and occurrences have no connection with actual events. Such things could occur, of course, and actually did, in the summer of 2010, after I’d written the novel. But that’s another matter.
Notes
It was said that the Piedmontese were false and polite: The Italians have a popular saying, according to which Il Piemontese è falso e cortese.
The military cops were responding: The carabinieri are a national police force and technically a branch of the military.
“Nuttata persa e figlia fìmmina”: A Sicilian expression that means “a lot of effort but nothing to show for it.” The literal meaning is “a night wasted, and it’s a girl,” reflecting the culture’s premium on male children.
the ACI: The Automobile Club d’Italia.
Buridan’s ass: The dilemma, named after medieval French philosopher Jean Buridan (ca. 1300–ca. 1360), whereby a donkey, standing equidistant from a pail of water on one side and a bale of hay on the other, must die of hunger and thirst because it lacks the rational capacity to choose the one or the other.
sartù di riso alla calabrisa: A variant on a Neapolitan dish, sartù di riso alla calabrese belongs to the southern Italian tradition of pasta al forno, except that it uses rice instead. Like those baked pasta dishes, it features a great variety of ingredients, including pork, beef, peas, meatballs, eggs, sorpressata, tomato sauce, provolone cheese, pecorino cheese, bread crumbs, onions, and so on. When it is finished, it is removed from the casserole and looks rather like a large cake of rice. In Calabria it is often served as the main course on Fat Tuesday, at the start of Lent.
A proxy vendetta: The Italian term is vendetta trasversale. In Mafia language, this means taking revenge against somebody by attacking his family or friends.
cornuto: Italian for “cuckold.”
“He was goat-tied”: The Sicilian term is incaprettato (containing the word for goat, capra), and it refers to a particularly cruel method of execution used by the Mafia, where the victim is placed fac
edown, and then a rope (or in this case, a light chain) is looped around his neck and then tied to his feet, which are raised behind his back, as in hog-tying. Fatigue eventually forces him to lower his feet, strangling him in the process.
at the station for the temples: The fictional city of Montelusa is modeled after the real Sicilian city of Agrigento, outside of which stands the famous Valley of the Temples, a major archaeological site of Sicilian Greek architecture. There are seven temples, all in the Doric style, mostly from the fifth century BC.
pasta alla carrettiera: A simple dish of pasta with a spicy tomato sauce containing a great deal of garlic, hot pepper, and parsley.
Notes by Stephen Sartarelli
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Contents
Praise for Andrea Camilleri
Also by Andrea Camilleri
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Author’s Note
Notes