The Safety Net

by Andrea Camilleri

  “Whoozis?”

  “This is Inspector Montalbano, police. Are you Gasparino Sidoti?”

  “That’s me. Is something wrong?”

  “I would like to talk to you.”

  “To me? What about?”

  “About Francesco Sabatello and his brother, Emanuele.”

  Sidoti remained silent for a moment, apparently puzzled by the inspector’s words. Then he asked:

  “Why do you want to go over such an old story?”

  “Sabatello’s son, the engineer, asked me to look into it. You can give him a ring to confirm, if you want.”

  “Do I have to come in to the station?”

  “If it’s no problem to you, I can come to you.”

  “When?”

  “Even this very morning.”

  Sidoti thought about this for a moment.

  “This morning I have an eye doctor’s appointment, but I should definitely be back by noon.”

  “All right then, I’ll see you at noon.”

  * * *

  As soon as he hung up, he rang the police commissariat at Palermo Airport and had them book him a seat on the six p.m. flight.

  He didn’t have time to set the receiver down before Mimì Augello came in, hollow-eyed from lack of sleep, unshaven, and looking enraged.

  He closed the door and sat down.

  “So, what have you got to tell me?” Montalbano asked, displaying great interest.

  “That your top-secret informant told you a big fat whopper.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Salvo, I was lying there in wait from eleven-thirty to six o’clock in the morning, and I never saw any yellow van drive by.”

  Montalbano was having a ball.

  “But are you sure?”

  “Sure as death.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t nod off at some point?”

  “Impossible. I drank four double espressos. And there’s more. Not a single vehicle—not a bicycle, not a tricycle, not a tractor-trailer—stopped outside the door to number 54, Via Lincoln.”

  “How very odd!” commented the inspector, donning a bewildered look.

  “Odd or not, the fact is that I lost a whole night’s sleep,” Augello said bitterly.

  “What are you gonna do, Mimì?” Montalbano said consolingly. “You have to be patient with these kinds of things. Just chalk it up as one of the many that didn’t work out. You lost your chance to get a good night’s sleep, you lost your chance with the Swedish girl on the boat . . .”

  Upon hearing these last words, Mimì understood everything.

  His face first turned pale, then red-violet, a bit like a dark bell pepper, then it veered towards lettuce green before, finally, regaining its normal color.

  “So you really wanted to make me pay for it, eh?”

  “Mimì, you must never lie to me.”

  Augello stood up.

  “So we’re even?” he asked.

  “We’re even.”

  Mimì held out his hand, and Montalbano shook it.

  “Oh, Mimì: By the way, I’m leaving for Boccadasse this evening.”

  “For how long?”

  “Four, five days.”

  “Say hi to Livia for me.”

  * * *

  It was a residential street with buildings not more than three stories high, modest but well maintained. Sidoti lived on the ground floor. The man who opened the door looked much younger than what must have been his age: Properly dressed, he was on the short side, sported a mass of white hair, pink cheeks, and pale blue eyes behind his glasses. He had a pleasant smile.

  “Hello, Inspector. Please come in.”

  At a glance Montalbano grasped that the apartment consisted of a rather large kitchen, a bathroom, a living-dining room—which they were in—and a bedroom. The old man sat him down in a chair at the table.

  “Shall I make us some coffee? Or would you prefer some nice cool wine that lifts the spirit?”

  “That sounds good, thanks. I’ll have half a glass with pleasure.”

  Sidoti went into the kitchen, grabbed a bottle and two glasses, and set them all down on the table. He uncorked the bottle, filled a glass halfway, handed it to the inspector, then served himself. They toasted.

  “To our health!”

  The wine went down smooth as silk.

  “I called Ernesto,” said Sidoti.

  “Sabatello?”

  “Yes. I’ve known him since he was a little kid, so we’re on very familiar terms.”

  “And what did he say to you?”

  “He said to do everything you asked.”

  “Did he explain why I need to talk to you?”

  “No, sir, he didn’t.”

  “And you didn’t ask?”

  “No, sir.”

  Montalbano felt curious.

  “And why not?”

  The old man looked at him with his childlike eyes.

  “Because life has taught me that the fewer questions you ask, the better off you are. And I’m ready to answer without asking.”

  All Montalbano had to do was to begin.

  “Do you remember the morning when Emanuele killed himself?”

  “How could I forget?”

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  “Sure. So, that morning, since the housekeeper didn’t come to work, the lady of the house had to go into town to buy groceries and gave Ernesto a ride to school. At around eight-thirty, Don Ciccino* called me and asked me to give him a hand in the garden.”

  “Was Emanuele with him?”

  “No, because Don Ciccino said his brother’d had a bad night, and so he’d told him to stay in bed and rest.”

  “But didn’t Don Ciccino have a regular job?”

  “Don Ciccino ran his own practice. He had his office on Via Vittorio Manueli. Since he didn’t need to work, ’cause of his family fortune, he could just stay at home if he didn’t feel like going to the office.”

  “Okay, go on.”

  “Wait, just to finish what I was saying, I wanted to tell you that toward the end there, Don Ciccino wasn’t doing so good with his health and all, and so he went to see some doctors in Rome and Milan. He was very worried, and so working at the office was the last thing on his mind.”

  “Did his illness change him?”

  “What can I say, Inspector? . . . His head was full of worries, really serious worries . . . he didn’t laugh anymore, and sometimes he seemed to talk nonsense . . . You’d say something to him and he wouldn’t even listen.”

  “Let’s go back to that morning.”

  “When we were done with the garden, a little after ten o’clock, Don Ciccino wanted us to go and look at the gauges that we’d installed in an area of the boundary wall where a big crack had appeared opposite the garage.”

  “So, you mean behind the villa?”

  “Exactly. He told me to go on ahead, and he was going to check up on Emanuele and see how he was doing. I started walking toward the gate . . .”

  “Wasn’t there another exit in the rear?”

  “No, sir. To go in and out you had to go through that single gate. After I was past it, I turned and started walking back toward the villa, hugging the outside of the wall to see if there was any other damage. Then I came to the spot where the crack was.”

  “How long did it take you to walk down the allée, go through the gate, and get to the place where the crack was?”

  Sidoti did some quick calculations in his head.

  “Ten minutes, at the most. It was a big park. Then, seeing that Don Ciccino wasn’t coming, I sat down on the ground. An’ I suddenly heard the bang and sprung to my feet.”

  “Did you realize at once that it was a gunshot?”

  “Yessir.”r />
  “What did you do?”

  “I just stood there for a second, feeling confused. Then I heard Don Ciccino’s voice calling me desperately. So I started running toward the villa.”

  “And what did you see?”

  “It’s burned into my head, Inspector. I got to around halfway down the long side of the villa when I saw Don Ciccino with his right knee on the ground and his brother’s head resting on his left leg. He was embracing him with one arm, face-to-face, and with the other hand he was trying to clean the blood off of him with a handkerchief.”

  “A handkerchief?”

  “Yessir. I don’t really remember, but it musta been one of those big kerchiefs like the ones women use to wrap their heads,” said Sidoti, falling silent. Then he resumed: “Don Ciccino then looked up for a second. It was like he was the one who’d been shot, that’s how much blood he had on him. And then he said to me: ‘He killed himself. Call the carabinieri.’”

  “Did you see where the revolver was?”

  “Yessir. It was on the ground, next to Don Ciccino’s leg, the one kneeling. But it wasn’t a revolver. It was a pistol.”

  “Did it belong to Don Ciccino?”

  “Yes. He kept it in a drawer in his nightstand, but without the charger, ’cause he was worried the kid might find it and start playing with it.”

  “Was the shell ever found?”

  “No, it wasn’t. Don Ciccino looked everywhere for it, an’ so did I, and so did the carabinieri, too, but nothin’ doin’ . . . ”

  “What did Don Ciccino tell the carabinieri?”

  “He said that he’d gone upstairs and found his brother lying down but awake. And so he asked him if he wanted to get dressed and come with him, but Emanuele said he didn’t feel up to it. So Don Ciccino went back downstairs and was already outside, almost at the gate, when he heard the gunshot, which came from behind the house. The carabinieri marshal then gave his opinion of what he thought had happened, and Don Ciccino said he agreed.”

  “And what was that?”

  “He said that, right after Don Ciccino went out of the house, Emanuele, barefoot and in his pajamas, must have run into Don Ciccino’s room, grabbed the pistol, and gone down the stairs, but, instead of going out the front door, where his brother, who was still on the main path, would have seen him, he went down to the bathroom on the ground floor, climbed out the window, and, once outside, shot himself, right there.”

  Montalbano balked.

  “Wait a second,” he said. “But didn’t he shoot himself near the toolshed?”

  “When I got there, they were both right under the bathroom window, the living man and the dead man.”

  Montalbano felt like someone who, approaching the shore, exhausted after a long swim, finds himself towed back out to the open sea by a strong riptide.

  Then why did Francesco repeatedly film that patch of wall if it had nothing to do with Emanuele’s suicide?

  “. . . every so often he would wail,” said Sidoti.

  “Eh?” said the inspector, who’d been distracted.

  “I was saying that Don Ciccino wouldn’t give himself no rest. Every so often he would wail to himself: ‘I should never have left him alone that morning!’”

  “So Francesco used to take his brother along with him even to work?”

  “Yessir. The guy wasn’t any bother, really.” Sidoti paused, then resumed: “But sometimes—even if it wasn’t very often—he would leave him alone all day, and in those cases it was up to me to look in on Emanuele and give him a hand.”

  “Was that when Don Ciccino used to go out of town for work?”

  “No, if he had to go out of town he would take Emanuele with him.”

  “So in what circumstances would he leave him behind?”

  “You must already know that Don Ciccino had a great passion.”

  “A woman?”

  Sidoti started laughing.

  “Woman? That’s a good one! Hunting! That was his passion! Every so often he had to go out hunting with his friends. He couldn’t help it.”

  “But Don Ciccino could easily have taken his brother along, no?”

  “It wasn’t that Don Ciccino didn’t want him.”

  “So it was Emanuele who didn’t want to go?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because he was afraid of guns.”

  “Can you explain a little better?”

  “What’s to explain, Inspector? He was scared to death of ’em. The minute he saw a rifle he would start shakin’ all over. I remember when he pissed his pants once ’cause Ernestino’d pointed his toy rifle at him, the kind with the cork bullet.”

  “What kind of man was Francesco, can you tell me?”

  “I wish there was more like him around! He was a real gentleman, and very generous. For example, in my case, in his will he left me a parcel of land out Montereale way, which allowed me to live my life without any worries. He was just a little overfussy.”

  “How so?”

  “He was very precise and attentive to detail, and would write down everything he spent and everything he did, really.”

  “Do you know what ever happened to his papers?”

  “Well, when his wife decided to move to Palermo, I filled up five crates with paper and took them up to the attic of the house that Don Ciccino had in Vigàta. But I don’t know if Ernesto kept them or got rid of them.”

  Then he looked at the inspector and said:

  “If you don’t have any more questions, I should probably start making lunch.”

  “I’m done,” said Montalbano, standing up. “Cooking anything interesting?”

  “I bought myself a big pig’s liver I’m gonna cut up and roast on brochettes.”

  “With each piece of liver wrapped in pig-gut?”

  “Of course.”

  “Man, it’s been so long since I’ve eaten that!” the inspector blurted out.

  Sidoti didn’t think twice.

  “Well, if you’d do me the honor of joining me . . .”

  “I wouldn’t want to intrude . . .”

  “It’s no intrusion at all! It’ll be a pleasure! In fact, why don’t you come into the kitchen and lend me a hand?”

  Five minutes later, Montalbano was in shirtsleeves, protected by an apron, extricating and stretching out, with the palms of his hands, the delicate, netlike pig intestine, while Sidoti was cutting the liver up into little cubes.

  And when the first aroma of liver scented with bay leaves and onions began to fill the kitchen, Montalbano realized that this meal, so simple and genuine, was going to be something to remember.

  * * *

  Almost immediately, after driving a few miles in the direction of Palermo Airport, he became convinced that it was going to be hell. The traffic was dense, chaotic, and on edge. It was as if dozens and dozens of insane or drug-addicted or drunken people had decided all at once to get in their cars and drive to Palermo.

  At one point, three cars tried, all at the same time, to pass one another, leading to one ending up in the opposite lane and crashing into an oncoming truck.

  Everything ground to a halt for half an hour.

  Fifteen minutes after the traffic started moving again, a dog appeared out of nowhere and cut in front of the inspector’s car. To avoid running him over, Montalbano swerved left, inevitably sideswiping the vehicle rolling along next to him.

  Introductions followed:

  “Asshole!”

  “Dickhead!”

  Another twenty minutes lost exchanging insurance information.

  Just a few miles outside the airport, the car started to skid. He realized he’d had a blowout.

  He felt like crying. Never in a million years would he be able to change the tire.

  Dejec
ted, he got out of the car and leaned against the hood.

  A car drove past and immediately came to a halt.

  “Inspector! What are you doing here?”

  It was Pasqualino, Adelina’s son. He changed Montalbano’s tire in the twinkling of an eye.

  Onwards and upwards! the inspector thought to himself.

  He raced into the parking lot, got out of the car, and started running towards the entrance, but halfway there he realized he’d forgotten his suitcase and cell phone in the car. If he turned back, he was sure to miss the flight. He kept on running. After all, he had plenty of underwear and clean shirts at Livia’s place.

  As soon as he went in, he was nabbed by Inspector Parisi of Airport Police.

  “Come with me.”

  And he got into a police car that drove him all the way to the gangway outside the plane. He climbed the stairs, found his seat, and collapsed into it, out of breath.

  8

  By the time he arrived outside Livia’s door, it was almost nine o’clock. He had a set of keys to the apartment but preferred ringing the doorbell. Selene started barking immediately in reply.

  Then, from behind the door came the voice of a suspicious Livia, who wasn’t expecting any visitors at that hour.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Police!” he said, trying to change the sound of his voice.

  But Livia didn’t fall for it.

  “Salvo!” she cried, fumbling about to open the door.

  As soon as it came open, the first to try to throw her arms around him was the joyously barking Selene, but Livia quickly pushed her away and squeezed Montalbano tight. They stood that way for a moment without saying anything.

  Then she took his hand and led him into the apartment.

  “Don’t you have a suitcase?” asked Livia.

  “I forgot it in the car at Palermo Airport, along with my cell phone. I would have missed the flight if I’d gone back to get them.”