Angelica's Smile

by Andrea Camilleri

  “Listen to me carefully. You can consider Miss Cosulich as good as dead.”

  “Hello? Who—”

  The other hung up.

  Montalbano turned to ice.

  Then the feeling of cold turned into heat, and he began to sweat profusely.

  The voice of the guy who’d spoken to him over the phone had been clearly distorted on purpose.

  The message left no room for doubt, unfortunately.

  But why did they want to kill her?

  No! No! I’ve always told you everything! I haven’t hidden anything from you! What reason would I have for keeping something so important from you?

  Those were not words addressed to a jealous lover.

  But what sense did it make for them to take the trouble of informing him of all people, a police inspector, of their murder plans?

  Didn’t they realize that he would immediately put Angelica under police protection?

  And that he would do everything within his power to prevent this preannounced murder?

  A hypothesis that might seem at first glance demented began to make its way into his head.

  What if the guy who had phoned actually wanted to achieve the opposite result?

  Say Angelica was threatened for something she did.

  Or didn’t do.

  If the reason for which she was threatened was something that couldn’t be revealed, she certainly couldn’t come to the police and report the threat.

  And so her friend intervenes and makes the phone call to Montalbano.

  That way, the police must necessarily protect Angelica.

  If things indeed were as he imagined them, then there was only one thing he could do.

  “Catarella, get Fazio for me.”

  He had to wait five minutes before Fazio answered.

  “There’s a new development. Can you come here right away?”

  “I could, but I’m being told something important right now.”

  “When do you think you’ll finish?”

  “In about an hour.”

  “I’ll wait for you.”

  “Catarella!”

  “Yessir, Chief!”

  “Call the Banca Siculo-Americana and ask to speak with Signorina Cosulich. But don’t tell them you’re with the police.”

  Catarella said nothing. Apparently the inspector’s prohibition had thrown his brain into confusion.

  “So ’oo’s I asposta say’z doin’ na talkin’?”

  “Say you’re the secretary of the bishop of Montelusa. As soon as she comes to the phone, say: ‘Please wait, I’m putting you in direct communication with His Excellency,’ and then put me on.”

  “Jeez, ’at’s wunnafull!”

  “What’s wonderful?”

  “This fack!”

  “What fact?”

  “Since whenna ya bin made a ixcillincy?”

  “Cat, His Excellency is the bishop!”

  “Oh!” said Catarella, disappointed.

  Montalbano had time to review the multiplication tables for six before the telephone rang.

  “Hello?” said Angelica.

  Montalbano put down the receiver.

  That was all he’d wanted to know. As long as the girl was inside the bank, she was safe.

  “Catarella!”

  “Yessir, Chief.”

  “Call Montelusa Hospital and ask if Signora Pirrera can receive any visitors.”

  “Shou’ I still say iss ’is Ixcillincy the bishop?”

  “No, in fact you should say the call is from the Vigàta police.”

  Going into a hospital as a healthy man always made him feel uneasy.

  “Who are you looking for?” a rather severe-looking woman asked him from behind a desk in the entrance.

  “Signora Pirrera?”

  The woman consulted the computer in front of her.

  “You can’t see her without the doctor’s permission.”

  “Let me speak to the doctor.”

  “Are you a relative of the patient?”

  “I’m her blood brother.”

  “Please wait a moment.”

  The sourpuss got on the phone.

  “He’s on his way.”

  Some ten minutes later a very thin man of about forty in glasses and a white smock appeared.

  “I’m Dr. Zirretta. And who would you be?”

  “There’s no ‘would be’ about it: I’m Inspector Montalbano, of that I’m absolutely certain.”

  The man looked at him in dismay.

  “I need to talk to Signora Pirrera.”

  “She’s sedated at the moment,” said the doctor.

  “Do you understand or don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do, but I can only allow you five minutes. Go ahead and talk to her. She’s on the second floor, room twenty.”

  For whatever reason, the inspector always got lost in hospitals. This time was no exception.

  In the end, when he finally found the room some ten minutes later, there was Dr. Zirretta standing outside the door.

  “The five minutes start now,” the inspector said to him.

  There were two beds in the room, but one was empty.

  Signora Pirrera was about fifty, rather plain and fat, and very pale.

  Her eyes were closed. Perhaps she was sleeping. Montalbano sat down in the chair beside her bed.

  “Signora Pirrera.”

  The woman opened her eyes slowly, as though her eyelids weighed a ton.

  “I’m Inspector Montalbano, of the Vigàta police. Do you feel up to answering two or three questions?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any idea why your husband . . .”

  She threw her hands up in the air.

  “I just can’t . . .”

  “Listen, was your husband greatly affected by the robbery?”

  “He went crazy.”

  “Was there a lot of jewelry in the safe?”

  “Probably.”

  “I’m sorry, but hadn’t you seen what was in the safe?”

  “He never wanted me to.”

  “One last question, and then I’ll let you rest. After the robbery, did your husband receive any letters or phone calls that—”

  “That same evening. A phone call. A long one.”

  “Do you know what it was about?”

  “No. He sent me into the kitchen. But afterwards . . .”

  “Was he worried, frightened, upset?”

  “Frightened.”

  “Thank you, Signora.”

  Now it all made sense.

  Mr. Z had used what he’d found in the safe to blackmail Pirrera.

  Or perhaps drive him to suicide.

  Fazio was at the station.

  “Sorry, Chief, but when you called I was talking with the widow Cannavò.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “This time she was fixated on her friends’ illnesses. One guy had pneumonia, and some lady had rheumatism, and so on. She filled my ears with useless chatter. But she did reveal that Schisa swings back and forth from depression to mania and probably spent a year in a mental hospital, in her opinion.”

  “And this is supposed to be important?”

  “Well, Chief, it’s obvious that Mr. Z’s mode of behavior isn’t exactly normal.”

  “Indeed . . . What about this idea of some new development within the group?”

  “Nothing, Chief. She swore there was nothing new that happened within the group. Or that if there was, she hadn’t noticed.”

  Another dead end.

  “What did you want to tell me?” Fazio asked.

  “Something rather curious. I got a call from a man who told me I should consider La Cosulich
as good as dead.”

  An electrical shock seemed to pass through Fazio’s body.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Come on!”

  Fazio remained silent for a moment, reflecting.

  Every so often he shook his head as if to say “no.” Then he spoke.

  “Well, it seems pretty strange to me for someone to call the police when he’s about to kill someone.”

  “Well done! That’s exactly what I thought.”

  “And were you able to figure out what he was trying to achieve with that phone call?”

  “The exact opposite of what he was saying.”

  17

  “Meaning what?” Fazio asked, puzzled.

  “He wanted complete protection for the girl.”

  “And who would threaten to kill her?”

  “Bah! . . . Who knows . . . The only way to find out is to talk to her. Call her at the bank and tell her to come here this afternoon, when she gets off work.”

  “Who’s gonna talk to her, you or me?”

  “We’ll both talk to her. Now listen up.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Knowing your secret vice of collecting people’s personal details, I’m sure you know everything about the people on the Peritores’ list. Their fathers’ and mothers’ names, places of birth, family relations . . .”

  Fazio blushed.

  “Well, yes, I do.”

  “Do you have this information here at the station?”

  “Well, yes, I do.”

  “Bring it to me and then go and make that call.”

  Fazio returned five minutes later with two sheets of paper in his hand.

  “I called her; she’ll be here at seven. And here’s that information.”

  “I’ll look at it later. Now it’s time for lunch.”

  After eating, while sitting and smoking on the flat rock under the lighthouse, his thoughts turned to Angelica again.

  And he thought of the bitter conclusion he’d reached that terrible night when he’d ruminated over the game Catarella was playing on the computer.

  A conclusion he’d pushed away with all his might, but which he could no longer shunt aside.

  The moment of truth had come. It could not be put off any longer.

  He saw a man walking along the jetty and heading toward where he was.

  Maybe he was coming to do maintenance work on the lighthouse.

  Then he heard the sound of diesel motors coming from the mouth of the port.

  He turned around to look.

  It was a fishing trawler returning at an odd hour. It must have had engine problems, because the sound it made was uneven.

  Not a single seagull was following it.

  Once upon a time there would have been at least ten behind it.

  But nowadays seagulls no longer hung around by the sea; they were in town, on rooftops, stooping to look for food in rubbish bins, alongside the rats.

  Sometimes, at night, he heard their angry, desperate cries . . .

  “Inspector . . .”

  He jerked his head around.

  It was Fazio.

  He’d seen him but not recognized him.

  He jumped to his feet.

  His eyes looked deep into Fazio’s.

  His brain roared with a sound like a giant wave.

  In a flash he understood why Fazio was there in front of him, pale-faced in spite of the sun and the walk he’d just taken.

  “Is she dead?”

  “No, but she’s in grave condition.”

  Montalbano did not so much sit back down as collapse onto the rock.

  Fazio sat down beside him and put his arm around him.

  A sort of terrible wind was raging inside the inspector’s head, preventing his thoughts from forming, from linking together. They were like so many fallen leaves scattered in every direction by the wind—indeed, they weren’t thoughts at all, but fragments, bits, images that lasted a second and then were swept away and vanished.

  Montalbano brought a hand to his head, as if it could somehow stop that chaotic, uncontrollable motion.

  Mygodmygodmygodmygodmygod . . .

  That was all he was able to say, a sort of refrain that wasn’t a prayer but a kind of entreaty, though soundless, without moving his lips.

  He was suffering like an animal wounded in a sudden ambush. He wished he could become a crab and run and hide inside a hole in a rock.

  Then, little by little, that storm, the same way as it had started, began to die down.

  Nostrils dilated, he breathed in the sea air deeply.

  Fazio, worried, did not take his eyes off him.

  After a short while, the inspector’s brain started working again, but still not the rest of his body.

  He felt a kind of dull oppression around his heart, and knew that if he tried to stand up, his legs would not be able to bear his weight.

  He opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t. His throat was all dried up, as though burned . . .

  Then he removed Fazio’s arm from around his shoulders, leaned his whole body over, at the risk of falling into the sea, and managed to touch the water. He thrust his hand into it and wet his lips, licking them with his tongue.

  Now he could talk.

  “When did it happen?”

  “After everyone left the bank for lunch at one-thirty. Since the restaurant is nearby, they always walk there.”

  “Have you seen her?”

  “Yes, as soon as the call came in to the station and I realized what was going on, I raced over there.”

  “And . . . you saw her?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how was she?”

  “Chief, she was shot square in the chest. Luckily there was a doctor there who stanched the wound.”

  Montalbano had trouble asking the question again.

  “Yes, but how was she? Was she suffering a lot? Was she crying?”

  “No. She was unconscious.”

  He breathed a sigh of relief. So much the better. Now he felt in a condition to carry on.

  “Were there witnesses?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are they at the station?”

  “Yes. Actually I had only one come in, the one who seemed the most precise.”

  “Why didn’t you inform me at once, before rushing to the scene? You could have come to get me or called me at Enzo’s.”

  “What good would that have done? And anyway . . .”

  “Anyway what?”

  “It didn’t seem like a good idea. I wanted first to be sure she was still alive.”

  He felt certain that Fazio had sensed there was something between him and Angelica.

  And he got confirmation of this at once.

  Fazio cleared his throat.

  “If you want me to call Inspector Augello . . .”

  “Why would I want you to do that?”

  “To have him come back.”

  “But why?”

  “In case you don’t feel like taking this case . . .”

  Fazio felt clearly uneasy.

  “I feel like it, don’t you worry about that. I have to feel like it, I have no choice. It was due to a failure on my part that they—”

  “Chief, nobody could have known—”

  “I should have known, Fazio. I should have known, can’t you see that? And after the anonymous telephone call I shouldn’t have left her unprotected for even a minute.”

  Fazio remained silent.

  Then he said:

  “Want me to drive you to Montelusa Hospital?”

  “No.”

  He wouldn’t have been able to bear seeing her lying there unconscious in a hospital bed. But perhaps he’d said “no” too decisiv
ely, too resolutely, because Fazio gave him a confused look.

  “Instead, try and find out how she is and whether they’ve operated on her.”

  Fazio stood up and took a few steps away.

  He spoke on his cell phone for what seemed to the inspector like an eternity. Then he returned.

  “The operation was successful. She’s in the recovery room. But they can’t change their guarded prognosis for another twenty-four hours. They can’t say whether or not she’s out of danger yet.”

  Now the inspector was certain his legs would hold up.

  “Let’s go back to the office,” he said.

  But in order to walk he had to lean on Fazio’s arm.

  “Let me talk to the witness.”

  “He’s an accountant who works with Cosulich; his name’s Gianni Falletta. I’ll go get him.”

  Falletta was a rather elegant young man of about thirty, with blond hair and an intelligent look about him.

  Montalbano had him sit down. Fazio, who was going to type up the exchange for the report, asked Falletta for his personal particulars. Then the inspector joined in.

  “Tell us how it happened.”

  “Well, we’d all gone out together to go to the restaurant. Since it’s not very far, we always walk there. Angelica was walking by herself, a little ahead of the group.”

  “Did she normally do that? Wasn’t she part of the group?”

  “Yes, she was, but she got a call on her cell phone and instinctively started walking ahead.”

  “Okay, continue.”

  “We turned off of the main street and rounded the corner onto the street with the restaurant at the far end. All of a sudden we heard the rumble of a large motorcycle behind us. We all stepped to the right to let it pass, and I noticed that Angelica had done the same.”

  “Excuse me for interrupting, but you seem to have had your eye particularly on Miss Cosulich.”

  Falletta blushed.

  “Not really . . . but, you know how it is . . . Angelica’s such a beautiful girl . . .”

  He could say that again!

  “Go on.”

  “The motorcycle wasn’t going particularly fast . . . actually it was going rather slowly . . . And so it drove past our group, past Angelica, and at that moment, the man riding in back—”

  “There were two men on the motorcycle?”