Treasure Hunt

by Andrea Camilleri

  Four-wheeled, very fast sole. With another woman at the wheel, he might not have been so ready to climb aboard that sort of missile, but he trusted her driving. In fact, when she still lived in Sweden, Ingrid had been a race-car mechanic.

  It took her twenty minutes to get to the restaurant, a distance that would have taken Montalbano a good forty-five. When she drove, Ingrid preferred not to talk. But every so often she turned to look at Montalbano, smiling and lightly stroking his leg.

  They sat down at the table closest to the sea, about twenty yards from the beach. The restaurant was famous for the quantity and quality of its antipasti, to the point that almost all its customers skipped the first course. Which was what they decided to do, too. They also ordered a bottle of chilled white wine.

  As they were waiting for the first antipasti, they used the time to chat a little. Ingrid knew that once he had a plate in front of him, Montalbano only liked to open his mouth to eat.

  “How’s your husband doing?”

  “I never see the guy! Ever since he got elected, he barely comes to Montelusa once every couple of months.”

  “Don’t you ever go to Rome to see him?”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Well, you are still husband and wife. . . .”

  “Come on, Salvo, you know very well that it’s only a formality. And, anyway, I like things this way.”

  “Any new loves?”

  “Is this an official interrogation?”

  “Of course not, it’s just to make conversation.”

  “All right, just to make conversation, the answer is no.”

  “So, no men for the past year?”

  “Are you kidding? I guess that, like a good Catholic, you think a woman should only sleep with a man she’s in love with?”

  “If I was so Catholic as you say, I would reply that a woman should only sleep with the man she’s married to.”

  “Good God, how boring!”

  The waiter arrived carrying the first six dishes delicately balanced in his arms.

  After twelve different copious appetizers and two bottles of wine, while waiting for the main course, a mixed grill of fish, they resumed their conversation.

  “And what about you?” Ingrid asked.

  “Me what?”

  “Still faithful to Livia, with an occasional exception?”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean yes to fidelity or yes to the exceptions?”

  “Fidelity.”

  “You mean that after Rachele—”

  “Nothing.”

  “Not even a little temptation?”

  “As for temptations, I have those all the time.”

  “Really? So how do you resist? Do you just say a little prayer and the devil runs away?”

  “Come on, don’t mock me.”

  “I’m not mocking you. On the contrary. I admire you. Sincerely.”

  “You used to ask fewer questions.”

  “I guess I’m just becoming more and more Italian and nosey about others. Tell me, does it take a lot out of you?”

  “Does what take a lot out of me?”

  “Resisting temptation.”

  “Sometimes, yes. But lately less and less. It must be my age.”

  Ingrid looked at him and then started laughing with gusto.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “This business about age. You’re totally wrong, you know. Age has very little to do with these things. I can tell you from personal experience. There are thirty-year-olds who seem like they’re seventy, in this respect, and vice versa.”

  The grilled fish arrived, along with another bottle. When they were done, Montalbano asked her if she wanted a whisky.

  “Yes, I do. But at your place.”

  As soon as Ingrid turned up the driveway to his house, she asked:

  “Were you expecting someone?”

  “No.”

  He too had noticed the strange car parked outside the front door.

  When they pulled up beside it, out of the other car emerged a girl of about twenty, nearly six feet tall and gorgeous, blond, wearing a miniskirt up to her pubis and a little too much makeup. They got out of their car too.

  “Montalbano?”

  “Yes?”

  “I ring doorbell but nobody answer. So I think you out but come back later.”

  Montalbano was flummoxed. Who was this? What did she want?

  “Listen . . .”

  “Nobody tell me you want with three people. I can do, but only with you. I don’t like with other woman. But she can watch.”

  “Well, if that’s the problem . . .” said Ingrid, rather angrily, “I’ll leave right now. Bye, Salvo, have fun.”

  She made as if to get back into her car, but didn’t, because Montalbano grabbed her arm as he turned towards the girl.

  “Listen, signorina, this must be some kind of mistake, I never—”

  “I understand. You pick her up and like her. No problem. I go.”

  Montalbano let go of Ingrid’s arm, went up to the girl and said in a low voice:

  “I’ll pay you anyway. How much do I owe?”

  “All paid. Ciao.”

  She got in the car and left, driving back up the driveway in reverse.

  Montalbano, still half confused, opened the front door, and Ingrid followed him inside, not saying a word. When he opened the French door to the veranda, she went outside and sat down, still silent. He got a bottle of whisky and two glasses and then sat down beside her on the bench.

  Ingrid grabbed the brand-new bottle and poured herself half a glass without offering any to Montalbano.

  “I don’t understand why you’re so upset,” the inspector began, pouring himself some whisky. “After all, between us, there’s—”

  “Between us, my ass!”

  Montalbano decided it was perhaps better to drink in silence. After a brief spell, she was the first to speak.

  “Don’t think I’m jealous or anything. I don’t give a fuck about your women.”

  “So then why are you making that face?”

  “Because I’m profoundly disappointed.”

  “About what?”

  “Disappointed in you. I had no idea you could be such a hypocrite.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What is this? At the restaurant you tell me there’d been no exceptions since Rachele and when we come back here there’s a whore waiting for you. So I guess, for you, going with a whore doesn’t constitute an exception, because you don’t even consider a prostitute to be a real woman.”

  “Ingrid, you are totally on the wrong track! There was a misunderstanding. I can explain everything.”

  “You don’t have to explain anything to me, and at any rate, I don’t want to hear it. I’m going to the bathroom.”

  Man, what a mess that fucking idiot Pasquale had created! In his rage Montalbano downed a whole glass of whisky. He heard Ingrid come out of the bathroom and then, moments later, he heard her cry out.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing, nothing.”

  She didn’t come back right away. Then she returned barefoot, holding her sandals in her hand. But she was different. Her eyes were now sparkling and she was wearing a mischievous, mocking smile.

  “Way to go, Salvo!” she said, sitting back down beside him.

  “Listen, I’d like to explain . . .”

  “I repeat, I don’t care what your explanation is. I’ve known many men, but never one as hypocritical as you!”

  Enough about hypocrisy! But this time, when she spoke, it was clear she was about to start laughing. What was going through her head?

  “At the restaurant,” she resumed, “you told me it was your age that allowed you to resist temptation. But now I see you’ve found another way. You’re such a liar, Salvo!”

  She refilled her glass.

  “Of course, we women have vibrators. But it’s not the same thing.”

  What on earth was she talki
ng about?

  “But why two?” she continued. “And on top of that, they’re both blond. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to get one blonde and one brunette?”

  At last there was light.

  “Where did you find them?”

  “Under your bed. I bent down to untie my sandals and . . .”

  But he was no longer listening. He stood up, climbed over her, and ran to the bedroom. The two inflatable dolls were right under the bed. That asshole Pasquale had had the bright idea to hide them there. Montalbano returned to the veranda.

  “All right, now you can keep guzzling that bottle while I tell you the whole story. But I want you to listen.”

  He told her everything, and at certain moments Ingrid was literally doubled over, her stomach hurting from laughing so hard.

  When it was time to go at three in the morning, after all the whisky in the house had been drunk, Ingrid slapped herself on the forehead.

  “I was about to forget! There’s a friend of mine who’d like to meet you.”

  “An ex?”

  “No, come on. He’s a twenty-year-old kid, very bright. He’s madly in love with me, but he admires you even more. It would make me very happy if you talked to him. His name is Arturo Pennisi.”

  “Tell him to give me a ring tomorrow, around noon, at the office. And to mention your name. Think you can manage to drive?”

  “I hope so. I won’t ask you to put me up because I’ve got workmen coming to the house tomorrow morning at eight. Ciao. Luv ya.”

  She kissed him lightly on the lips, went out, got in her car, and drove off.

  Whereas around two o’clock Montalbano had started to feel sleepy, he now felt completely awake. He went and washed his face, then grabbed the envelope from before and sat back down on the veranda. This time his name wasn’t on it, but only the words: Treasure Hunt.

  Before opening it, however, he tried to imagine what kind of man might organize this sort of game, and why. He knew from experience that if somebody asks you two questions in a row, it’s always best to answer the second one first, because the answer you give to the second question will help you in some way to answer the first.

  Thus: Why this so-called treasure hunt? What interest did the guy have in organizing it? Any practical or economic interest was out of the question. Normally a treasure hunt involved the participation of a number of people, either as individuals or in groups, whereas here it seemed that there was one and only one contestant: him. And, in fact, the envelope containing the first note had borne his name. On top of that, the first line of the second stanza had called him out directly:

  Tell me, my good Inspector . . .

  And on top of this, hadn’t the walls of the hut been papered with photographs of him?

  There could be no doubt, therefore, that this was more than a game: it was a personal challenge. Addressed not to Montalbano the man, but to Montalbano the cop.

  Now who would challenge a cop? Either another cop, as in, say, a competition of skills to see who could solve a case first, or a person with a certain kind of mentality. Not necessarily a criminal mentality, to be sure, but certainly someone with his head not screwed on entirely straight, who wanted to show that he was better and smarter than the cop.

  And who wanted to let the inspector know indirectly that, if he felt like it, he was capable of anything, because at any rate Montalbano would never be able to track him down because he wasn’t up to the task, was not on the same level of intelligence.

  So one had to wonder whether such a man would continue to keep within the parameters of a game created just to pass the time, or, at a certain point, take it up a dangerous notch or two. Test the limits of the law, or even go beyond them.

  QED: by answering the second question he had answered, in part, the first: who was this man?

  The question, of course, did not presume it would receive a full answer, with first and last names.

  It had to be put more precisely: What kind of man was this? In short, he had to create a profile of him.

  And here he felt like laughing. He’d seen so many American movies where there was a psychologist working with the police who would draw up profiles of unknown murderers. And these movie psychologists were always brilliant. With a serial killer they’d never seen before they could manage to tell you how tall he was, his age, whether he was married or single, what bad things had happened to him when he was five, and whether he drank beer or Coca-Cola. And they were always right on target.

  But it was best not to stray too far afield. It couldn’t be an old man he was dealing with, because an old man would not have known how to use the high-tech tools needed to make those photographs. It had to be someone between twenty and sixty years of age. In other words, half the country. Intelligent, proud, given to considering himself so much sharper and shrewder than others that he felt in some way able to win whatever sort of game he might wish to play. In other words, a dangerous man.

  Wouldn’t it therefore be better to cut short the treasure hunt, instead of continuing the challenge? No, it would be a mistake. He would surely take the inspector’s withdrawal as an insult and probably avenge himself somehow. How? By doing something outrageous, something that would force Montalbano to keep playing. No, it was better not to take that chance.

  He grabbed the envelope, opened it, and took out the note.

  The usual little poem that made you want to throw up, which even an illiterate street minstrel would have felt too embarrassed to write.

  I can see at this stuff you’re; an ace!

  You quickly found the right place!

  11-6-7 / B-6-1-4-18 / 3-4 / 1-4-7-6-16-16-1-18-6-4-7 / 5-2-8-M-9-2-15

  D-12-6-5-4-7 / 3-16-W-3-11-5 / B-13-1-4-18 / 18-12-12-D / 16-9-2-15!

  1-2-3 / 6-3-X-1 / 16-6-3 / 14-16-12 / 8-16-6-1 /

  2-5-V-3 / 1-16 / 10-16-16-K / F-16-7,

  9-1-6-6 / B-3 / 19-3-6-9-V-3-7-3-19 / 7-9-18-2-1 /

  1-16 / 14-16-12-7 / 19-16-16-7.

  The manner will surely surprise you,

  but that’s our game, and it will continue.

  Man, what a pain in the ass! What was this, the Settimana Enigmistica or something? A message in code? Reserved for the privileged few who could decipher it? And those first two lines of verse—if you could really call them that—displayed about the same level of poetic craft as that old television commercial where the robot says to the housewife:

  Now that I know all your wishes,

  do you mind if I do the dishes?

  Montalbano still didn’t feel sleepy, despite all the wine and whisky he’d guzzled, and so he went into the bathroom, got undressed, washed himself, put his shirt back on and, still in his underpants, grabbed a pen and a sheet of paper, returned to the veranda, and sat back down.

  If the author of the poem, for lack of a better term, kept to the general rules of puzzles, then each number repeated in the lines should correspond to one same letter, also repeated.

  It was clear that all the vowels and consonants written in code should be contained in the two couplets not in code, that is, the first and the last.

  He got down to work on the start of the poem. He wrote down the first line and underneath it, as a test, he wrote numbers in sequence, starting at 1, corresponding to the appearance of each new letter.

  I c a n s e e a t t h i s s t u f f y o u ’r e a n a c e

  1 / 2 3 4 / 5 6 6 / 3 7 / 7 8 1 5 / 5 7 9 10 10 /

  11 12 9 13 6 / 3 4 / 3 2 6

  Since the first line of the second couplet contained four groups of numbers separated by slashes, this must mean that the line was made up of four words. He then copied out the second line of the first couplet and assigned the proper numbers.

  Then he copied the first four groups of numbers in the first line of the second couplet, and under them wrote out the corresponding vowels or consonants, based on the numeration he had just established.

  11 6 7 / B 6 1 4 18 / 3 4 / 1 4 7 6 16 16 1 18 6 4 7

  Y e t / B e
i n g / a n / i n t e l l i g e n t

  He’d hit the nail on the head on the first try! Decoded, the two lines read as follows:

  Yet being an intelligent schmuck

  doesn’t always bring good luck!

  Now he took the first two groups of numbers of the third couplet and copied them down.

  1-2-3 / 6-3-X-1

  Under them he wrote the corresponding vowels and consonants, which yielded:

  I c a e a x i

  Which didn’t mean a goddamn thing, not even in Chinese or Greenlandian. But then he suddenly thought:

  “Wanna bet the code of the third couplet can be found in the last two lines in clear, and I have to renumber every vowel and consonant starting with 1?”

  He gave it a try. And it proved to be the right approach.

  The next . . .

  This time, too, he’d guessed right. He continued:

  The next one you won’t have to look for,

  It’ll be delivered right to your door.

  Having deciphered the message in full, he felt a little disappointed.

  He’d wasted a lot of time trying to come up with a profile of the man who wanted to take him on this treasure hunt, and the portrait that had emerged gave reason for concern. But the riddles, cryptograms, and puzzles the person had come up with were totally pedestrian, real beginners’ stuff. Did he make them that way on purpose, because he considered the inspector incapable of solving more complex problems? Or was it because that was the level of their creator himself?

  Whatever the case, since he had no choice but to wait for the guy to get back in touch, Montalbano got up, closed the French door, and went to bed.

  7

  He was awakened by the telephone. It was nine A.M.

  “Hello, Inspector? Pasquale here. Wha’ss wrong, din’tcha like the girl I sent ya? Tell me azackly whatcha din’t like about ’er, an’ I’ll sendja ’nother t’night.”