IM03 - The Snack Thief

by Andrea Camilleri

  “You understand, of course, why I’ve come to see you.”

  The inspector stood up, went into the kitchen, placed the little cup in the sink, and returned.

  “I’m playing aboveboard,” the colonel continued, after waiting for him to return. “It’s probably the best way, with you. That’s why I chose to come in that car, for which you twice requested information on the owner.”

  From his jacket pocket he withdrew two sheets of paper, which Montalbano recognized as the faxes he’d sent to Automobile Registration.

  “Only you already knew who the car belonged to; your commissioner must certainly have told you its license number was cloaked. So, since you sent me these faxes anyway, it must mean their intention was more than simply to request information, however imprudently. I therefore became convinced—correct me if I’m wrong—that for your own reasons, you wanted us to come out into the open. So here I am: your wish has been granted.”

  “Would you excuse me a minute?” Montalbano asked.

  Without waiting for an answer, he got up, went into the kitchen, and returned with a plate on which was a huge, hard piece of Sicilian cassata ice cream. The colonel settled in patiently and waited for him to eat it.

  “Please continue,” said the inspector. “I can’t eat it when it’s like this. It has to melt a little first.”

  “Before we go any further,” resumed the colonel, who apparently had very strong nerves, “let me clarify something. In your second fax, you mention the murder of a woman named Aisha. We had absolutely nothing to do with that death. It must surely have been an unfortunate accident. If she’d needed to be eliminated, we would have done so immediately.”

  “I don’t doubt it. I was well aware of that too.”

  “So why did you state otherwise in your fax?”

  “Just to turn up the heat.”

  “Right. Have you read the writings and speeches of Mussolini?”

  “He’s not one of my favorite authors.”

  “In one of his last writings, Mussolini says that the people should be treated like a donkey, with a carrot and a stick.”

  “Always so original, that Mussolini! You know something?”

  “What?”

  “My grandfather used to say the same thing. He was a peasant and, since he wasn’t Mussolini, he was referring only to the ass, the donkey, that is.”

  “May I continue the metaphor?”

  “By all means!”

  “Your faxes, as well as your having persuaded Vice-Commissioner Valente of Mazàra to interrogate the captain of the fishing boat and the head of the prefect’s cabinet, these and other things were the stick you used to flush us out.”

  “So where does the carrot come in?”

  “The carrot consists in the declarations you made at the press conference you held after arresting Mrs. Lapècora for the murder of her husband. You could have dragged us into that one by the hair, but you didn’t. You were careful to keep that crime within the confines of jealousy and greed. Still, that was a menacing carrot; it said—”

  “Colonel, I suggest you drop the metaphor; at this point we’ve got a talking carrot.”

  “Fine. You, with that press conference, wanted us to know that you had other information in your possession which, at that moment, you were unwilling to show. Am I right?”

  The inspector extended a spoon towards the ice cream, filled it, and brought it to his mouth.

  “It’s still hard,” he said to Lohengrin Pera.

  “You discourage me,” the colonel commented, but he went on. “Anyway, since we’re laying our cards on the table, will you tell me everything you know about the case?”

  “What case?”

  “The killing of Ahmed Moussa.”

  He’d succeeded in making him say that name openly, as duly recorded by the tape in the videocamera.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I love the sound of your voice, the way you speak.”

  “May I have a glass of water?”

  To all appearances, Lohengrin Pera was perfectly calm and controlled, but inside he was surely close to the boiling point. The request for water was a clear sign.

  “Go get it yourself in the kitchen.”

  While the colonel fussed about in the kitchen with the glass and faucet, Montalbano, who was looking at him from behind, noticed a bulge under his jacket, beside the right buttock. Want to bet the midget is armed with a gun twice his size? He decided not to take any chances and brought a very sharp knife, which he had used to cut the bread, closer to him.

  “I’ll be explicit and brief,” Lohengrin Pera began, sitting down and wiping his lips with a tiny handkerchief, an embroidered postage stamp. “A little more than two years ago, our counterparts in Tunis asked us to collaborate with them on a delicate operation aimed at neutralizing a dangerous terrorist, whose name you had me repeat just a moment ago.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Montalbano, “but I have a very limited vocabulary. By ‘neutralizing’ do you mean ‘physically eliminating’?”

  “Call it whatever you like. We discussed the matter with our superiors, naturally, and were ordered not to collaborate. But then, less than a month later, we found ourselves in a very unpleasant position, where it was we who had to ask our friends in Tunis for help.”

  “What a coincidence!” Montalbano exclaimed.

  “Yes. Without any questions, they gave us the help we wanted, and so we found ourselves morally indebted—”

  “No!” Montalbano yelled.

  Lohengrin Pera gave a start.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “You said: morally indebted.”

  “As you wish. Let’s say merely ‘indebted,’ without the adverb, all right? But excuse me; before going on, I have to make a telephone call. I keep forgetting.”

  “Be my guest,” the inspector said, gesturing towards the phone.

  “Thanks; I’ve got a cell phone.”

  Lohengrin Pera was not armed. The bulge on his buttock was his portable phone. He punched in a number that Montalbano was unable to read.

  “Hello? This is Pera. All’s well, we’re talking.”

  He turned off the cellular and left it on the table.

  “Our colleagues in Tunis discovered that Ahmed’s favorite sister, Karima, had been living in Sicily for years, and that, through her work, she had a vast circle of acquaintances.”

  “Vast, no,” Montalbano corrected him. “Select, yes. She was a respectable prostitute; she inspired confidence.”

  “Ahmed’s right-hand man, Fahrid, suggested to his chief that they establish a base of operations in Sicily and avail themselves of Karima’s services. Ahmed rather trusted Fahrid; he didn’t know he’d been bought by the Tunisian secret services. With our discreet assistance, Fahrid came here and made contact with Karima, who, after a careful review of her clients, chose Lapècora. Perhaps by threatening to inform his wife of their relationship, Karima forced Lapècora to reopen his old import-export business, which turned out to be an excellent cover. Fahrid was able to communicate with Ahmed by writing coded business letters to an imaginary company in Tunis. By the way, in your press conference you said that at a certain point Lapècora wrote anonymously to his wife, informing her of his liaison. Why did he do that?”

  “Because he smelled something fishy in the whole arrangement.”

  “Do you think he suspected the truth?”

  “Of course not! At the most, he probably thought they were trafficking drugs. If he’d discovered he was at the center of an international intrigue, he’d have been killed on the spot.”

  “I agree. At first, our primary concern was to keep the impatience of the Tunisians in check. But we also wanted to be certain that, once we put the bait in the water, the fish would bite.”

  “Excuse me, but who was the blond young man who showed up now and then with Fahrid?”

  The colonel looked at him with admiration.

  “Yo
u know that too? He’s one of our men who would periodically go and check up on things.”

  “And while he was at it, he would fuck Karima.”

  “These things happen. Finally Fahrid persuaded Ahmed to come to Italy by tempting him with the prospect of a big weapons shipment. As always with our invisible protection, Ahmed Moussa arrived at Mazàra, according to Fahrid’s instructions. Under pressure from the chief of the prefect’s cabinet, the captain of the fishing boat agreed to take Ahmed aboard, since the meeting between Ahmed and the imaginary arms dealer was supposed to take place on the open sea. Without the slightest suspicion, Ahmed Moussa walked into the trap. He even lit a cigarette, as he’d been told to do, so that they might better recognize each other. But Commendator Spadaccia, the cabinet chief, made a big mistake.”

  “He hadn’t warned the captain that it would not be a clandestine meeting, but an ambush,” said Montalbano.

  “You could say that. The captain, as he’d been told to do, threw Ahmed’s papers into the sea and divided the seventy million lire the Arab had in his pocket with the rest of the crew. Then, instead of returning to Mazàra, he changed course. He had his doubts about us.”

  “Oh?”

  “You see, we had steered our motor patrols away from the scene of the action, and the captain knew this. If that’s the situation, he must have thought, who’s to say I won’t run into something on the way back in—a missile, a mine, even another motor patrol that would sink my boat to destroy all trace of the operation? That’s why he came to Vigàta. He was shuffling the cards.”

  “Had he guessed right?”

  “In what sense?”

  “Was there someone or something waiting for the fishing boat?”

  “Come now, Montalbano! That would have been a useless massacre!”

  “And you engage only in useful massacres, is that it? And how do you plan to keep the crew quiet?”

  “With the carrot and the stick, to quote again that writer you don’t appreciate. In any case, I’ve said everything I had to say.”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, no?”

  “I mean: that’s not everything. You have very cleverly taken me out to sea, but I haven’t forgotten those left behind on land. Fahrid, for example. He must have learned, from one of your informers, that Ahmed had been killed; but the fishing boat had docked at Vigàta, inexplicably—for him. This troubled him. At any rate, he must now proceed to the second part of his assignment. That is, neutralizing, as you put it, Lapècora. So he shows up at the guy’s front door and, to his amazement and alarm, finds out that somebody got there first. And so he shits in his pants.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “He gets scared, he no longer knows what is happening. Like the captain of the fishing boat, he thinks your people are behind it. It looks to him like you’ve begun removing from circulation everyone who was in some way involved in the operation. For a moment, perhaps, he suspects it might have been Karima who did away with Lapècora. You may not know this, but Karima, under orders from Fahrid, forced Lapècora to hide her in his apartment; Fahrid didn’t want Lapècora to get any brilliant ideas during those critical hours. Fahrid, however, didn’t know that once she’d carried out her mission, Karima had gone back home. In any event, at some point that morning, Fahrid met up with Karima, and the two must have had a violent argument in the course of which he told her that her brother had been killed. Karima then tried to escape. She failed, and she was murdered. She would have had to be eliminated anyway, at some later point, on the quiet.”

  “As I’d suspected,” said Lohengrin Pera, “you’ve figured it all out. Now I ask you to pause and think. You, like me, are a loyal, devoted servant of our state. And so—”

  “Stick it up your ass,” Montalbano said softly.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Let me repeat: you can take our state and stick it up your ass. You and I have diametrically opposed concepts of what it means to be a servant of the state. For all intents and purposes, we serve two different states. So I beg you please not to liken your work to mine.”

  “So now you want to play Don Quixote, Montalbano? Every community needs someone to wash the toilets. But this does not mean that those who wash the toilets are not part of the community.”

  Montalbano felt his rage growing; one more word would surely have been a mistake. He reached out with one hand, brought the dish of ice cream nearer, and began to eat. By now Lohengrin Pera had got used to the ritual, and once Montalbano started nibbling the ice cream, he stopped talking.

  “Karima was killed, correct?” asked Montalbano after a few spoonfuls.

  “Unfortunately, yes. Fahrid was afraid that—”

  “I’m not interested in why. I’m interested in the fact that she was killed by the authority of a loyal servant of the state such as yourself. How would you call this specific case, neutralization or murder?”

  “Montalbano, you can’t use the standard of common morality—”

  “Colonel, I already warned you once: do not speak of morality in my presence.”

  “I merely meant that sometimes, the reason of state—”

  “That’s enough,” said Montalbano, who had wolfed down the ice cream in four angry bites. Then, suddenly, he slapped his forehead.

  “What time is it, anyway?”

  The colonel looked at his wristwatch, a dainty, precious item that looked like a child’s toy.

  “It’s already two o’clock.”

  “Why on earth hasn’t Fazio arrived?” Montalbano asked himself, pretending to be worried. Then he added: “I have to make a phone call.”

  He got up, went over to the phone on his desk two yards away, and started speaking in a loud voice so that Lohengrin Pera would hear everything.

  “Hello, Fazio? Montalbano here.”

  Fazio, drowsy with sleep, spoke with difficulty.

  “Chief. What is it?”

  “Come on, did you forget about the arrest?”

  “What arrest?” said Fazio, at sea.

  “The arrest of Simone Fileccia.”

  Simone Fileccia had been arrested the day before, by Fazio himself. And, in fact, Fazio understood at once.

  “What should I do?”

  “Come pick me up at my place, and we’ll go get him.”

  “Should I bring my own car?”

  “No, better make it a squad car.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “Wait.”

  The inspector put his hand over the receiver and turned to the colonel.

  “How much more time will this take?”

  “That’s up to you,” said Lohengrin Pera.

  “Be here in, say, twenty minutes or so,” the inspector said to Fazio, “not before. I have to finish talking to a friend.”

  He hung up, sat back down. The colonel smiled.

  “Since we’ve got so little time, tell me your price immediately, if you’ll forgive the expression.”

  “I come cheap, very cheap,” said Montalbano.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Two things, that’s all. Within a week, I want Karima’s body to turn up, and in such a way that there can be no mistake as to its identification.”

  A billy club to the head would have had less effect on Lohengrin Pera. Opening and closing his mouth, he gripped the edge of the table with his tiny hands, as if afraid he might fall out of his chair.

  “Why?” he managed to utter with the voice of a silkworm.

  “None of your fucking business,” was the firm, blunt reply.

  The colonel shook his little head from left to right and right to left, looking like a spring puppet.

  “It’s not possible.”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t know where she was . . . buried.”

  “And who does know?”

  “Fahrid.”

  “Has Fahrid been neutralized? You know, I’m starting to like that word.”

  “No. He’s
gone back to Tunisia.”

  “Then there’s no problem. Just get in touch with his playmates in Tunis.”

  “No,” the midget said firmly. “The matter has been put to rest at this point. We have nothing to gain by stirring things up again with the discovery of a corpse. No, it’s not possible. Ask me anything you like, but that is one thing we cannot grant you. Aside from the fact that I can’t see the purpose of it.”

  “Too bad,” said Montalbano, getting up. Automatically, Lohengrin Pera also stood up, in spite of himself. But he wasn’t the type to give in easily.

  “Well, just for curiosity’s sake, would you tell me what your second demand is?”

  “Certainly. The commissioner of Vigàta has put in a request for my promotion to vice-commissioner—”

  “We shall have no problem whatsoever having it accepted,” said the colonel, relieved.

  “What about having it rejected?”

  Montalbano could distinctly hear Lohengrin Pera’s world crumble and fall to pieces on top of him, and he saw the colonel hunch over as if trying to shield himself from a sudden explosion.

  “You are totally insane,” said the colonel, sincerely terrified.

  “You’ve just noticed?”

  “Listen, you can do whatever you like, but I cannot give in to your demand to turn up the body. Absolutely not.”

  “Shall we see how the tape came out?” Montalbano asked politely.

  “What tape?” said Lohengrin Pera, confused.

  Montalbano went over to the bookcase, stood up on tiptoe, took out the videocamera, and showed it to the colonel.

  “Jesus!” said the colonel, collapsing in a chair. He was sweating.

  “Montalbano, for your own good, I implore you . . .”

  But the man was a snake, and he behaved like a snake. As he appeared to be begging the inspector not to do anything stupid, his hand had moved ever so slightly and was now within reach of the cell phone. Fully aware that he would never make it out of there alone, he wanted to call for reinforcements. Montalbano let him get another centimeter closer to the phone, then sprang. With one hand he sent the cell phone flying from the table, with the other he struck the colonel hard in the face. Lohengrin Pera flew all the way across the room, eyeglasses falling, then slammed against the far wall back first, and slid to the ground. Montalbano slowly drew near and, as he’d seen done in a movie about Nazis, crushed the colonel’s little glasses with his heel.