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And while he was at it, he went for broke, pounding the cell phone violently into the ground with his heel until he’d half-pulverized it.
He finished the job with a hammer he kept in his tool drawer. Then he approached the colonel, who was still on the floor, groaning feebly. As soon as he saw the inspector in front of him, Lohengrin Pera shielded his face with his forearms, as children do.
“Enough, for pity’s sake,” he implored.
What kind of man was he? A punch in the face and a trickle of blood from his split lip, and he’s reduced to this? Montalbano grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket, lifted him up, and sat him down. With a trembling hand, Lohengrin Pera wiped away the blood with his embroidered postage stamp, closed his eyes, and appeared to faint.
“It’s just that . . . blood . . . I can’t stand the sight of it,” he muttered.
“Yours or other people’s?” Montalbano inquired.
He went into the kitchen, grabbed a half-full bottle of whisky and a glass, and set these in front of the colonel.
“I’m a teetotaler.”
Montalbano felt a little calmer now, having let off some steam.
If the colonel, he thought, wanted to phone for help, then the people who were supposed to come to his rescue must certainly be in the neighborhood, just a few minutes’ drive from the house. That was the real danger. He heard the doorbell ring.
“Chief? It’s me, Fazio.”
He opened the door halfway.
“Listen, Fazio, I have to finish talking to that person I mentioned. Wait in the car. I’ll call you when I need you. But be careful: there may be some people in the area who are up to no good. Stop anyone you see approaching the house.”
He shut the door and sat back down in front of Lohengrin Pera, who seemed lost in dejection.
“Now try to understand me, because soon you won’t be able to understand anything anymore.”
“What do you intend to do to me?” asked the colonel, turning pale.
“No blood, don’t worry. I’ve got you in the palm of my hand, I hope you realize that. You were foolish enough to blab the whole story in front of a videocamera. If I have the tape aired on TV, it’s going to kick up such a fucking row on the international scene that you’ll be selling chickpea sandwiches on a street corner before it’s all over. If, on the other hand, you let Karima’s body be found and block my promotion—and make no mistake, the two things go hand in hand—I give you my word of honor that I’ll destroy the tape. You have no choice but to trust me. Have I made myself clear?”
Lohengrin Pera nodded his little head “yes,” and at that moment the inspector realized that the knife had disappeared from the table. The colonel must have seized it when he was talking to Fazio.
“Tell me something,” said Montalbano. “Are there such things, that you know of, as poisonous worms?”
Pera gave him a questioning look.
“For your own good, put down the knife you’re holding inside your jacket.”
Without a word, the colonel obeyed and set the knife down on the table. Montalbano opened the whisky bottle, filled the glass to the brim, and held it out to Lohengrin Pera, who recoiled with a grimace of disgust.
“I’ve already told you I’m a teetotaler.”
“Drink.”
“I can’t, believe me.”
Squeezing the colonel’s cheeks with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, Montalbano forced him to open his mouth.
Fazio heard the inspector call for him after waiting some forty-five minutes in the car, as he was starting to drift off into a leaden sleep. Upon entering the house, he immediately saw a drunken midget, who had vomited all over himself to boot. Unable to stand on his feet, the midget, leaning first against a chair and then against the wall, was trying to sing “Celeste Aida.” On the floor, Fazio noticed a pair of glasses and a cell phone, both smashed to pieces. On the table were an empty bottle of whisky, a glass, also empty, and three or four sheets of paper and identity cards.
“Listen closely, Fazio,” said the inspector. “I’m going to tell you exactly what happened here, in case anybody questions you. I was returning home this evening, around midnight, when I saw, at the top of the lane that leads to my house, this man’s car, a BMW, blocking my path. He was completely drunk. I brought him home with me because he was in no condition to drive. He had no identification in his pockets, nothing. After several attempts to sober him up, I called you for help.”
“Got it,” said Fazio.
“Now, here’s the plan. You’re going to pick him up—he doesn’t weigh much, in any case—put him in his BMW, get behind the wheel, and put him in a holding cell. I’ll follow behind you in the squad car.”
“And how are you going to get back home afterwards?”
“You’ll have to drive me back. Sorry. Tomorrow morning, as soon as you see he’s recovered his senses, you’re to set him free.”
Back at home, he removed the pistol from the glove compartment of his car where he always kept it, and stuck it in his belt. Then he took a broom and swept up all the fragments of Lohengrin Pera’s cell phone and glasses, and wrapped them in a sheet of newspaper. He took the little shovel that Mimì had given François and dug two deep holes almost directly below the veranda. In one he put the bundle and covered it up, in the other he dumped the papers and documents, now shredded into little pieces. These he sprinkled with gasoline and set on fire. When they had turned to ash, he covered up this hole as well. The sky was beginning to lighten. He went into the kitchen, brewed a pot of strong coffee, and drank it. Then he shaved and took a shower. He wanted to be completely relaxed when he sat down to enjoy the videotape.
He put the little cassette inside the bigger one, as Nicolò had instructed him to do, then turned on the TV and the VCR. After a few seconds with the screen still blank, he got up and checked the appliances, certain he’d made some wrong connection. He was utterly hopeless with this sort of thing, to say nothing of computers, which terrified him. Nothing doing this time, either. He popped out the larger cassette, opened it, looked at it. The little cassette seemed poorly inserted, so he pushed it all the way in. He put the whole package back into the VCR. Still nothing on the goddamn screen. What the hell wasn’t working? As he was asking himself this, he froze, seized by doubt. He dashed to the phone.
“Hello?” answered the voice at the other end, pronouncing each letter with tremendous effort.
“Nicolò? This is Montalbano.”
“Who the hell else could it be, Jesus fucking Christ?”
“I have to ask you something.”
“Do you know what time it is?”
“I’m sorry, really sorry. Remember the videocamera you lent me?”
“Yeah?”
“Which button was I supposed to push to record? The top one or the bottom one?”
“The top one, asshole.”
He’d pushed the wrong button.
He got undressed again, put on his bathing suit, bravely entered the freezing water, and began to swim. After tiring and turning over to float on his back, he started thinking that it was not, in the end, so terrible that he hadn’t recorded anything. The important thing was that the colonel believed he had and would continue to do so. He returned to shore, went back in the house, threw himself down on the bed, still wet, and fell asleep.
When he woke up it was past nine, and he had the distinct impression he couldn’t go back to work and resume his everyday chores. He decided to inform Mimì.
“Hallo! Hallo! Whoozat talkin’ onna line?”
“It’s Montalbano, Cat.”
“Izzat really ’n’ truly you in person, sir?”
“It’s really and truly me in person. Let me speak with Inspector Augello.”
“Hello, Salvo. Where are you?”
“At home. Listen, Mimì, I don’t think I can come in to work.”
“Are you sick?”
“No. I just don’t feel up to it, not today
nor tomorrow. I need to rest for four or five days. Can you cover for me?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks.”
“Wait. Don’t hang up.”
“What is it?”
“I’m a little concerned, Salvo. You’ve been acting weird for the last couple of days. What’s the matter with you? Don’t make me start worrying about you.”
“Mimì, I just need a little rest, that’s all.”
“Where will you go?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll call you later.”
Actually, he knew exactly where he would go. He packed his bag in five minutes, then took a little longer to select which books to bring along. He left a note in block letters for Adelina, the housekeeper, informing her he’d be back within a week. When he arrived at the trattoria in Mazàra, they greeted him like the prodigal son.
“The other day, I believe I understood that you rent rooms.”
“Yes, we’ve got five upstairs. But it’s the off-season now, so only one of ’em’s rented.”
They showed him a room, spacious and bright and looking straight onto the sea.
He lay down on the bed, brain emptied of thoughts, chest swelling with a kind of happy melancholy. He was loosing the moorings, ready to sail out to the country of sleep, when he heard a knock on the door.
“Come in, it’s unlocked.”
The cook appeared in the doorway. He was a big man of considerable heft, about forty, with dark eyes and skin.
“What are you doing? Aren’t you coming down? I heard you were here and so I made something for you that . . .”
What the cook had made, Montalbano couldn’t hear, because a sweet, soft melody, a heavenly tune, had started playing in his ears.
For the last hour he’d been watching a rowboat slowly approaching the shore. On it was a man rowing in sharply rhythmic, vigorous strokes. The boat had also been sighted by the owner of the trattoria; Montalbano heard him cry out:
“Luicì! The cavaliere’s coming back!”
The inspector then saw Luicino, the restaurateur’s sixteen-year-old son, enter the water to push the boat up onto the sand so the passenger wouldn’t get his feet wet. The cavaliere, whose name Montalbano did not know, was smartly dressed, tie and all. On his head he wore a white Panama hat, with the requisite black band.
“Cavaliere, did you catch anything?” the restaurateur asked him.
“A pain in the ass, that’s what I caught.”
He was a thin, nervy man, about seventy years old. Later, Montalbano heard him bustling about in the room next to his.
“I set a table over here,” said the cook as soon as Montalbano appeared for dinner, and he led him into a tiny room with space for only two tables. The inspector felt grateful for this, since the big dining room was booming with the voices and laughter of a large gathering.
“I’ve set it for two,” the cook continued. “Do you have any objection if Cavaliere Pintacuda eats with you?”
He certainly did have an objection: he feared he would have to talk while eating.
A few minutes later, the gaunt septuagenarian introduced himself with a bow.
“Liborio Pintacuda, and I’m not a cavaliere,” he said, sitting down. “There’s something I must tell you, even at the risk of appearing rude,” the non-cavaliere continued. “I, when I’m talking, do not eat. Conversely, when I’m eating, I don’t talk.”
“Welcome to the club,” said Montalbano, sighing with relief.
The pasta with crab was as graceful as a first-rate ballerina, but the stuffed bass in saffron sauce left him breathless, almost frightened.
“Do you think this kind of miracle could ever happen again?” he asked Pintacuda, gesturing towards his now empty plate. They had both finished and therefore recovered the power of speech.
“It’ll happen again, don’t worry, just like the miracle of the blood of San Gennaro,” said Pintacuda. “I’ve been coming here for years, and never, I repeat, never, has Tanino’s cooking let me down.”
“At a top-notch restaurant, a chef like Tanino would be worth his weight in gold,” the inspector commented.
“Yes he would. Last year, a Frenchman passed this way, the owner of a famous Parisian restaurant. He practically got down on his knees and begged Tanino to come to Paris with him. But there was no persuading him. Tanino says this is where he’s from, and this is where he’ll die.”
“Someone must surely have taught him to cook like that. He can’t have been born with that gift.”
“You know, up until ten years ago, Tanino was a small-time crook. Petty theft, drug dealing. Always in and out of jail. Then, one night, the Blessed Virgin appeared to him.”
“Are you joking?”
“I try hard not to. As he tells it, the Virgin took his hands in hers, looked him in the eye, and declared that from the next day forward, he would become a great chef.”
“Come on!”
“You, for example, knew nothing of this story of the Virgin, and yet after eating the bass, you specifically used the word ‘miracle.’ But I can see you don’t believe in the supernatural, so I’ll change subject. What brings you to these parts, Inspector?”
Montalbano gave a start. He hadn’t told anyone there what he did for a living.
“I saw your press conference on television, after you arrested that woman for killing her husband,” Pintacuda explained.
“Please don’t tell anybody who I am.”
“But they all know who you are, Inspector. Since they’ve gathered that you don’t like to be recognized, however, they play dumb.”
“And what do you do of interest?”
“I used to be a professor of philosophy. If you can call teaching philosophy interesting.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Not at all. The kids get bored. They no longer care enough to learn how Hegel or Kant thought about things. Philosophy instruction should probably be replaced with some subject like, I don’t know, ‘Basic Management.’ Then it still might mean something.”
“Basic management of what?”
“Life, my friend. Do you know what Benedetto Croce writes in his Memoirs? He says that he learned from experience to consider life a serious matter, as a problem to be solved. Seems obvious, doesn’t it? But it’s not. One would have to explain to young people, philosophically, what it means, for example, to smash their car into another car one Saturday night. And to tell them how, philosophically, this could be avoided. But we’ll have time to discuss all this. I’m told you’ll be staying here a few days.”
“Yes. Do you live alone?”
“For the fifteen days I spend here, very much alone. The rest of the time I live in a big old house in Trapani with my wife and four daughters, all married, and eight grandchildren, who, when they’re not at school, are with me all day. At least once every three months I escape and come here, leaving no phone number or forwarding address. I cleanse myself, take the waters of solitude. For me this place is like a clinic where I detoxify myself of an excess of sentiment. Do you play chess?”
On the afternoon of the following day, as he was lying in bed reading Sciascia’s Council of Egypt for the twentieth time, it occurred to him that he’d forgotten to tell Valente about the odd agreement he’d made with the colonel. The matter might prove dangerous for his colleague in Mazàra if he were to continue investigating. He went downstairs where there was a telephone.
“Valente? Montalbano here.”
“Salvo, where the hell are you? I asked for you at the office and they said they had no news of you.”
“Why were you looking for me? Has something come up?”
“Yes. The commissioner called me out of the blue this morning to tell me my request for a transfer had been accepted. They’re sending me to Sestri.”
Valente’s wife, Giulia, was from Sestri, and her parents also lived there. Until now, every time the vice-commissioner had asked to be transferred to Liguria, his request had been denied.
&nb
sp; “Didn’t I say that something good would come out of this affair?” Montalbano reminded him.
“Do you think—?”
“Of course. They’re getting you out of their hair, in such a way that you won’t object. And they’re right. When does the transfer take effect?”
“Immediately.”
“See? I’ll come say good-bye before you leave.”
Lohengrin Pera and his little gang of playmates had moved very fast. It remained to be seen whether this was a good or a bad sign. He needed to do a foolproof test. If they were in such a hurry to put the matter to rest, then surely they had wasted no time in sending him a message as well. The Italian bureaucracy, usually slow as a snail, becomes lightning-quick when it comes to screwing the citizen. With this well-known truth in mind, he called his commissioner.
“Montalbano! For God’s sake, where have you run off to?”
“Sorry for not letting you know. I’ve taken a few days off to rest.”
“I understand. You went to see—”
“No. Were you looking for me? Do you need me?”
“Yes, I was looking for you, but I don’t need you for anything. Just rest. Do you remember I was supposed to recommend you for a promotion?”
“How could I forget?”
“Well, this morning Commendator Ragusa called me from the Ministry of Justice. He’s a good friend of mine. He told me that, apparently . . . some obstacles have come up—of what kind, I have no idea. In short, your promotion has been blocked. Ragusa wouldn’t, or couldn’t, tell me any more than that. He also made it clear that it was useless, and perhaps even unwise, to insist. Believe me, I’m shocked and offended.”
IM03 - The Snack Thief Page 20
