The Paper Moon

by Andrea Camilleri

  The schoolmaster, moreover, had, according to Paola, seemed upset about the violent death of his wife’s lover. Does that seem right?

  He got up, drank his coffee, took a shower, and shaved, but, as he was about to go out, a wave of lethargy swept over him. All of a sudden he no longer felt like going to the office, seeing people, talking.

  He went out on the veranda. The day looked like it was made of porcelain. He decided to do what his body was telling him to do.

  “Catarella? Montalbano here. I’ll be coming in late today.”

  “Aahhh, Chief, Chief, I wanneta say—”

  He hung up, grabbed the two sheets of paper Catarella had printed out and the little songbook, and laid them down on the table on the veranda.

  He went back inside, looked in the phone book, found the number he wanted, and dialed it. As the number was ringing, he checked his watch: nine o’clock, just the right time to call a schoolteacher who was staying home from school.

  Montalbano let the phone ring a long time and was about to lose patience when he heard someone pick up at the other end.

  “Hello?” said a male voice, sounding slightly groggy.

  The inspector hadn’t expected this and felt a little bewildered.

  “Hello?” the male voice repeated, now not only slightly groggy but also slightly irritated.

  “Inspector Montalbano here. I would like—”

  “You want Paola?”

  “Yes, if it’s not—”

  “I’ll go get her.”

  Three minutes of silence passed.

  “Hello?” said a female voice the inspector didn’t recognize.

  “Am I speaking with Paola Torrisi?” he asked, doubtful.

  “Yes, Inspector, it’s me, thanks for calling.”

  But it wasn’t the same voice as the previous evening. This one was a bit husky, deep, and sensual, like that of someone who…He suddenly realized that maybe nine in the morning wasn’t the right time of day to call a schoolteacher who, staying home from work, might be busy with other things.

  “I’m sorry if I’ve inconvenienced you…”

  She giggled.

  “It’s no big deal. I want to tell you something, but not over the phone. Could we meet somewhere? I could drop by the station.”

  “I won’t be in my office this morning. We could meet later this morning in Montelusa. You tell me where.”

  They decided on a café on the Promenade. At noon. That way Paola could finish at her own pace what she had started before being interrupted by his phone call. And maybe even allow herself an encore.

  While he was at it, he decided to confront Dr. Pasquano. Better over the phone than in person.

  “What’s the story, Doctor?”

  “Take your pick. Little Red Riding Hood or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

  “No, Doctor, I meant—”

  “I know what you meant. I’ve already let Tommaseo know that I’ve done what I was supposed to do and that he’ll have the report by tomorrow.”

  “What about me?”

  “Have Tommaseo give you a copy.”

  “But couldn’t you tell me—”

  “Tell you what? Don’t you already know he was shot in the face at close range? Or would you rather I use some technical terms where you wouldn’t understand a goddamn thing? And haven’t I also told you that although his thing was exposed, it hadn’t been used?”

  “Did you find the bullet?”

  “Yes. And I sent it over to Forensics. It entered through the left eye socket and tore his head apart.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Do you promise not to bug me for at least ten days if I tell you?”

  “I swear.”

  “Well, they didn’t kill him right away.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They stuck a big handkerchief or a white rag in his mouth to prevent him from screaming. I found some filaments of white cloth wedged between his teeth. Sent them down to the lab. And after they shot him, they pulled the cloth out of his mouth and took it with them.”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “If it’s the last.”

  “Why are you speaking in the plural? Do you think there was more than one killer?”

  “Do you really want to know why? To confuse you, my friend.”

  He was a mean one, Pasquano, and enjoyed it.

  But this business of the rag crammed into Angelo’s mouth was not something to be taken lightly.

  It meant that the murder had not been committed on impulse. I came, I shot, I left. And good night.

  No. Whoever went to see Angelo had some questions to ask him, wanted to know something from him. And needed some time to do this. That was why they put him in a state where he’d be forced to listen to what the other was saying or asking him, and they would take the rag out of his mouth only when Angelo had decided to answer.

  And maybe Angelo answered and was killed anyway. Or else he wouldn’t or couldn’t answer, and that was why he was killed. But why hadn’t the killer left the rag in his mouth? Perhaps because he was hoping to lead the police down a less certain path? Or, more precisely, because he was trying to create a false lead by making it look like a crime of passion—a premise which, though supported by the bird outside the cage, would have been disproved if the rag had been found in the victim’s mouth? Or was it because the rag wasn’t a rag? Maybe it was a handkerchief with personalized initials that could have led to the killer’s first and last names?

  He gave up and went out on the veranda.

  He sat down and looked dejectedly at the two pages Catarella had printed up. He never had understood a damn thing about numbers. Back in high school, he remembered, when his friends were already doing abscesses—no, wait, abscesses are something else, something you get in your mouth. So what were they called? Ah, yes. Abscissas. When his school-mates were doing abscissas and coordinates, he was still having trouble with the multiplication table for the number eight.

  On the first page, there was a column of thirty-eight numbers on the left-hand side, which corresponded to a second column of thirty-eight numbers on the right-hand side.

  On the second page, there were thirty-two numbers on the left and thirty-two numbers on the right. Thus the sum total of numbers on the left came to seventy, and there were seventy numbers on the right as well. Montalbano congratulated himself on this discovery, while having to admit to himself that the exact same conclusion could have been reached by a little kid in the third grade.

  Half an hour later, he made a discovery that gave him as much satisfaction as Marconi surely must have felt when he realized he’d invented the wireless telegraph or whatever it was he invented. That is, he discovered that the numbers in the left-hand columns were not all different but consisted of a group of fourteen numbers each repeated five times. The repetitions were not consecutive but scattered as though at random within the two columns.

  He took one of the two numbers in the left-hand column and copied it onto the back of one of the pages as many times as it was repeated. Next to it he wrote down the corresponding numbers from the right-hand column.

  It seemed clear to him that while the number on the left was in code, the number on the right was in clear and referred to a sum of money. The total came to 596,000. Not much if it was in lire. But more than a billion lire if it was in euros, as was more likely. So the business dealings between Angelo and Signor 213452 came to that amount. Now, since there were another thirteen numbered gentlemen, and the corresponding numbers for each added up to about the same amount as those examined, this meant that Angelo’s business volume came to over 12, 13 billion lire, or 6, 6.5 million euros. To be kept, however, carefully hidden. Assuming everything conformed to his suppositions. It was not impossible that those figures meant something else.

  His eyes started to fog over, having trouble focusing on the numbers. He was getting tired. At this rate, he thought, it would take him three to five years to cra
ck the code of the songs, and by the time it was all over, he would surely be blind and walking around with a white stick and a dog on a harness.

  He brought everything back inside, closed the door to the veranda, went out, got in his car, and left. Since he was still a bit early for his appointment with Paola, he crept along at barely five miles per hour, driving everyone who happened to be behind him crazy. Every motorist, when each managed to pass him, felt obliged to insult him. Thus, he was a(n):

  faggot, according to a trucker;

  asshole, according to a priest;

  cornuto, according to a nice lady;

  ba-ba-ba-, according to a stutterer.

  But all these insults went in one ear and out the other. Only one really made him mad. A distinguished-looking man of about sixty pulled up alongside him and said:

  “Donkey!”

  Donkey? How dared he? The inspector made a vain attempt to pursue the man, pressing on the accelerator until he was at twenty miles an hour, but then preferred slowing back down to his normal cruising speed.

  Arriving at the Promenade, he couldn’t find a parking space and had to drive around a long time before he found a spot very far from the appointed place. When he finally got there, Paola was already sitting at a table, waiting for him.

  She ordered a prosecco. Montalbano joined in.

  “This morning, when Carlo heard there was a police inspector on the phone, he got a terrible scare.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

  “Oh, that’s just the way he is. He’s a sweet kid, but the mere sight of, say, a Carabiniere driving beside him deeply upsets him. There’s no explanation for it.”

  “Maybe some research into his DNA could come up with an explanation,” said Montalbano. “He probably had a few ancestors who were outlaws. Ask him sometime.”

  They laughed. So the man who took up the schoolteacher’s free time on days when she didn’t go to school was named Carlo. End of subject. They moved on to the matter at hand.

  “Yesterday evening,” said Paola, “when that business about Angelo dictating the letters to Elena came out, I felt really uncomfortable.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, despite Michela’s opinion to the contrary, I think Elena was telling the truth.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You see, Inspector, during the time we were together, I wrote Angelo many letters. I used to like to write to him.”

  “I didn’t find any when I searched the apartment.”

  “They were returned to me.”

  “By Angelo?”

  “No, by Michela. After her brother and I broke up. She didn’t want them to end up in Elena’s hands.”

  Michela really could not stand this Elena.

  “You still haven’t told me why you felt uncomfortable.”

  “Well, one of those letters was dictated by Angelo.”

  A big point for Elena! One which, moreover, could not be cast into doubt, since it was scored by her defeated rival.

  “Or, rather,” Paola continued, “he gave me the general outlines. And since we broke up, I’ve never said anything to Michela about this little conspiracy.”

  “You could have mentioned it last night.”

  “Would you believe me if I said I didn’t have the courage? Michela was so sure that Elena was lying…”

  “Can you describe the contents of the letter?”

  “Of course. Angelo had to go to Holland for a week, and Michela had made it clear she intended to go with him. So he had me write a letter saying I’d asked for a ten-day leave from school so I could accompany him. It wasn’t true; it was exams time. Like they’re going to give me a ten-day vacation during exams! Anyway, he said he would show his sister the letter, and this would allow him to go alone, as he wished.”

  “And if Michela had run into you in Montelusa when Angelo was in Holland, how would you have explained that to her?”

  “Angelo and I had thought about this. I would have said that at the last moment the school denied me permission to leave.”

  “And you didn’t mind him going away alone?”

  “Well, I did, a little, of course. But I realized that it was important for Angelo to liberate himself for a few days from Michela’s overbearing presence.”

  “Overbearing?”

  “I don’t know how else to define it, Inspector. Words like ‘assiduous,’ ‘affectionate,’ ‘loving’ don’t really give a sense of it. They fall short. Michela felt this sort of absolute obligation to look after her brother, as though he were a little boy.”

  “What was she afraid of?”

  “Nothing, I don’t think. My explanation for it—there’s nothing scientific about it, mind you, I don’t know a thing about psychoanalysis—but in my opinion it came from a sort of frustrated craving for motherhood that was transferred entirely, and apprehensively, onto her brother.”

  She gave her usual giggle.

  “I’ve often thought that if I’d married Angelo, it would have been very hard for me to free myself not from my mother-in-law’s clutches—since she, poor thing, counts for nothing—but from my sister-in-law’s.”

  She paused. Montalbano realized she was weighing the words she would use to express what she was thinking.

  “When Angelo died, I expected Michela to fall apart. Whereas the opposite happened.”

  “Meaning?”

  “She wailed, she screamed, she cried, yes, but at the same time I sensed a feeling of liberation in her, at the unconscious level. It was as if she’d thrown off a burden. She seemed more serene, more free. You know what I mean?”

  “Perfectly.”

  Then, who knows why, a question popped into his mind.

  “Has Michela ever had a boyfriend?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Dunno, just wondering.”

  “She told me that when she was nineteen, she fell in love with a boy who was twenty-one. They were officially engaged for three years.”

  “Why did they break up?”

  “They didn’t. He died. He was a little too fond of driving really fast on his motorcycle, even though he was apparently a gifted cyclist. I don’t know the details of the accident. In any case, after that, Michela never wanted to get close to other men. And I think that from that moment on, she redoubled her vigilance over poor Angelo, until she became asphyxiating.”

  “You’re an intelligent woman, you’re in no way under investigation, and you’ve long considered your relationship with Angelo over,” said Montalbano, looking her in the eye.

  “Your preamble is a bit distressing,” said Paola with her usual grin. “What are you getting at?”

  “I want an answer. Who was Angelo Pardo?”

  She didn’t seemed surprised by the question.

  “I’ve asked myself the same thing, Inspector. And I don’t mean when he left me for Elena. Because up till then I knew who Angelo was. He was an ambitious man, first of all.”

  “I’d never thought of him in that light.”

  “Because he didn’t want to appear so. I think he suffered a lot from being expelled from the medical association. It cut short a very promising career. But, you see, even with the profession he had…For example, within a year he would have had exclusive rights of representation for two multinational pharmaceutical companies across all of Sicily, not just Montelusa and its province.”

  “He told you this?”

  “No, but I overheard many of his phone conversations with Zurich and Amsterdam.”

  “And when did you start asking yourself who Angelo Pardo was?”

  “When he was killed. Things began to appear in a different light, things for which you had an explanation before and which now, after his death, are not so easily explained anymore.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as certain gray areas. He was capable of disappearing for a few days at a time and then, when he came back, he wouldn’t tell you anything. You couldn’t squeeze a single
word out of him. In the end I was convinced he was seeing another woman, having some passing fling. But after the way he was killed, I’m no longer so sure he was having affairs.”

  “What was he doing, then?”

  Paola threw up her hands in despair.

  12

  Before going to eat, Montalbano dropped in at the station. Catarella was sleeping in front of the computer, head thrown back, mouth open, a bit of saliva trickling down his chin. He did not wake up. The next phone call would take care of that.

  On the inspector’s desk was a dark blue canvas bag. A leather label stuck onto the front of it bore the words “Salmon House.” He opened it and realized it was insulated. Inside were five round, transparent plastic containers in which one could see large fillets of pickled herring swimming in multicolored sauces. There was also a smoked salmon, whole. And an envelope wrapped in cellophane.

  He opened it.

  From Sweden with love. Ingrid.

  Apparently Ingrid had found someone there from Sicily and taken the opportunity to send along that little gift. He suddenly missed Ingrid so much that the desire to open one of those containers and have a little foretaste faded. When would she make up her mind to come back?

  It was no longer possible to go to the trattoria. He had to race back home and empty that bag in the refrigerator. Picking it up, he noticed there were three sheets of paper under it. The first was a note from Catarella.

  Chief. Seeing as how I don’t know weather or not your coming personally in person to the ofice, I’m leving you the printout of the siccond file which I had to stay up all nite to figger out the past word for but in the end I stuck it to that file I did.

  The other two pages were all numbers. Two columns, as before. The left-hand figures were exactly the same as those in the first file. He pulled the pages he’d worked on that morning out of his jacket pocket and checked.