Montalbano's First Case

by Andrea Camilleri

  He sat down, dumbfounded.

  “How did you get your hands on that, sir?”

  “I grabbed it. There were two more. I picked this one because it’s the more presentable.”

  “And where did you get it?”

  “I searched Dr. Siracusa’s house.”

  “How did you get in?”

  “Through a window.”

  “Like a thief, sir?”

  “Like a thief, Fazio.”

  “Well, if that’s the case, then search isn’t the right word.”

  Fazio wiped his brow with a big, checkered handkerchief.

  “Sir, I’m telling you this as a friend: One of these days you’ll end up in jail. And I might be the one who has to put the cuffs on you. You took a huge risk—are you aware of that?”

  “I’m aware, but it was worth it.”

  Fazio, who was a natural-born cop, perked up his ears.

  “Well, let’s hear it then.”

  And the inspector told him everything.

  “What do you think?” he asked at the end.

  “Sir, first I have a question. Why was Siracusa hiding illegal weapons?”

  “They’re collectible. You see, those weapons certainly belonged to some criminal; maybe they had been used in some murder. He must have paid a high price for them. And every time he opened the secret drawer, he must have felt a shiver of pleasure. So, what do you think about these new developments?”

  “Sir, what am I supposed to think? Siracusa, who can’t help himself when it comes to women, is taken with Rosanna. He boasts about his weapons; he might have even shown them to her and explained how they work. Rosanna sleeps with him, but starts asking for things in exchange. Maybe she asks Siracusa to fill in the request for her to visit Cusumano in jail. And he does it. And then she asks him for a revolver.”

  “No. She didn’t ask him for the revolver. She just took it and never went back to the Siracusas’. When Siracusa saw our request for help on Retelibera, he went to check, found that his revolver was missing, and realized—pretty quickly—that Rosanna had stolen it. He panicked, and then fled.”

  “Then Rosanna went to visit Pino and told him she had a weapon,” Fazio said. “But why did she tell us she had gotten the revolver from the same man who gave her the notes?”

  Montalbano was about to answer when the phone rang.

  “I have Representative Torrisi on the line,” the dispatcher said.

  Before answering, the inspector told Fazio, “It’s Representative Torrisi. What’d I tell you? Whoever needed to be informed of Brucculeri’s arrest knows about it and is doing some damage control. They know Cusumano screwed up big time.”

  “Montalbano speaking,” he said, lifting the receiver.

  “Inspector! It’s so great to talk with you again, such a pleasure!”

  “What can I do for you, Representative Torrisi?”

  “I just arrived from Rome—I’m at the airport. I should be in Vigata in an hour and a half, at the most. Would that be too late to have lunch together?”

  “Actually, I have another engagement.”

  “How about dinner then?”

  “Sorry, but an old friend of mine is in town.”

  Montalbano could have been starving on a desert island for a month and he still would not have agreed to break bread with that man.

  “Well then, can I drop by the station around five?”

  “If you prefer, I could come by your office.”

  There was silence on the other end. The inspector knew what was going through the representative’s head: Torrisi was weighing the pros and cons. As an elected official, it would have been more appropriate for Montalbano to visit him. But what would people think? If he were to visit the station, he could always claim he was concerned about the safety of his constituents. Montalbano was enjoying himself thinking about the predicament the representative found himself in. Then he decided to administer the coup de grace.

  “After all, this will be just a friendly chat, won’t it?”

  The other hesitated a few more seconds, then said, “Thank you very much for your courtesy, but it would be more convenient if I came to you.”

  “Of course, Your Honor, as you wish. See you later, then.”

  He hung up.

  “There are some papers that need signing,” Fazio said.

  “Then sign them—what’s stopping you?”

  “You’re the one who needs to sign them!”

  “Is that so? Then you need to know something so we can get along just fine: you need to warn me twenty-four hours before informing me of something like that.”

  “Warn you about what, sir?”

  “That there are papers that need signing. That way I can get used to the idea. If you tell me something like that out of the blue, you’ll traumatize me.”

  10

  As an appetizer: an extremely tender baby octopus a strascinasale followed by a few deep-fried smelts. First course: squid ink pasta. Second course: two oven-roasted sea breams, of considerable size. For a digestif: a meditative walk down to the pier was definitely in order. He started off in a good mood. Judge Torrisi had flown in from Rome in a hurry, called into service by the Cuffaro family, who were particularly alarmed by the stupidity of their beloved offspring, Pino. That meant that at five o’clock Montalbano was going to have a little fun with him. But when he sat down on the flat rock under the lighthouse, his mood slowly began to change. It might have been because of the regular and monotonous background noise of the breaking waves, but he couldn’t shake that uncomfortable feeling of being a puppet in the hands of a puppeteer. Of being someone who thought he was walking on his own two feet, freely, not knowing that invisible wires were actually moving him forward. We are but puppets … Who wrote that? Ah, Pirandello. Speaking of which, he needed to buy the latest Borges book. Mysteriously, the author’s name, once it popped into his head, didn’t want to go away. “Borges, Borges,” he kept repeating. And all of a sudden, a brief passage by the Argentine author he had read long before came back to him. Borges was narrating the plot of a mystery in which everything could be traced back to the random encounter between two chess players on a train who had never met before. The two players planned a murder, executed it almost pedantically, and managed to avoid raising any suspicion. In short, Borges was describing a very plausible series of events, logically connected, without any gaps. Only, at the end, the writer added a postscript, a question, this question: What if the encounter between the two players on the train wasn’t random at all? That was it—in the investigation he was conducting, he didn’t even consider a question of the sort. Those few lines by Borges constituted a crucial lesson on how to carry out investigations. And thus, in this case as well, he had to ask himself a question capable of turning everything upside down, of questioning all his assumptions. For instance: Why did Cusumano want to have Judge Rosato killed? The poor man had already called twice to check on the progress of the inquiry. Flash! He realized that Judge Rosato was the weakest link in the entire story. Or rather, the link he still didn’t understand. Or better yet, the link he had taken at face value. He took a deep breath; suddenly the sea air hit his brain, shook off all the dust, cleared the cobwebs, the trash. Now that his head was clean and clear he could go back to reasoning properly.

  It was a quarter to four when he got up off the rock and rushed back to town. He knew where Fazio lived, but by now he was already at the station. Should he give him a heads-up? It would be a waste of time; he would tell him everything later. Fazio lived on top of the hill in a horrible new building. He rang the intercom. A female voice answered.

  “It’s Montalbano.”

  “Inspector Montalbano, my husband is …”

  “At the office, I know. But I need to speak to … his friend.”

  “I see. Fourth floor.”

  Forty-something and friendly, the woman was waiting at the door.

  “Come in, come in.”

  She led him into a room
that was both the living and dining room.

  “As soon as she heard it was you, Rosanna went to change.”

  “Has she been good?”

  “Yes, she has. She’s a good girl. She just fell for the wrong guy.”

  Rosanna came in, a bit embarrassed, and stood by the door.

  “Good morning.”

  She was wearing the dress the inspector had bought her.

  “Come in. I need to talk to you. Sit down.”

  Rosanna did as she was told. Mrs. Fazio, on the other hand, got up.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “I’ll be in the other room if you need me.”

  The girl looked very tense. Tightly wound. She kept biting her lips nervously. The few hours she had spent at the Fazio residence hadn’t done her much good.

  “Did you come to tell me the good news?” was her first question.

  “What news?”

  “Did you arrest Cusumano?”

  He wasn’t Pino anymore; now she referred to him by his last name.

  “It’s just a matter of hours now. We’ll arrest him, that much is certain, but not for the reason you told us.”

  “What was it I told you?”

  “That he wanted you to kill Judge Rosato.”

  “You don’t think it’s true?”

  “No, it’s not true. Cusumano had never mentioned that name. You remembered it because you heard it years earlier at home, since the judge was involved in a suit your father had filed against one of his neighbors. A suit that, by the way, your father won. To make sure you didn’t forget that name you filled your purse with things that reminded you of it. You see, Rosanna, if Pino had really mentioned the judge’s name to you, you would never have forgotten it, the love you had for Cusumano would have impressed it indelibly upon your memory, you would have needed neither the rose nor the elastic band.”

  “Then who did I want to kill?”

  “Pino Cusumano.”

  He thought he heard an almost imperceptible clang, the sound of something that snapped and suddenly relaxed, perhaps a spring in the armchair where the girl was sitting, since it would have been impossible for that sound to come from inside Rosanna’s body, from her nerves strained almost to their breaking point. Montalbano continued.

  “But he found a way to avoid you whenever he went to the courthouse. He was scared. Especially because you went to visit him in prison, thanks to that idiot Dr. Siracusa, and you told him yourself that you were going to kill him. That was a big mistake.”

  “It wasn’t a mistake.”

  Montalbano had no desire to quarrel. He went on.

  “It was a mistake because Cusumano got scared. He knew you really meant it. The only thing is that even if you had tried to shoot him, the revolver wouldn’t have worked. And you couldn’t have known that. But, since you’re a clever girl, you had foreseen that something could have gone wrong and so you made up the story that Cusumano wanted you to prove your love and that he had asked you to kill Judge Rosato. The same story you told me. That way, if everything went according to plan, Cusumano’s destiny would have been decided either way: he would have died at your hand, or he would have gone back to jail for conspiracy to commit murder. Unfortunately, things went differently. And now it’s your turn to speak.”

  Before saying anything, Rosanna opened and closed her mouth two or three times.

  “And why would I hate Cusumano that much?”

  “Because he raped you.”

  Rosanna screamed. Montalbano didn’t have enough time to get up, but this time the girl had no intention of hurting him. She was down on her knees, holding his legs, her head on the inspector’s knees, rocking back and forth, weeping lightly. She was like a wounded animal. Mrs. Fazio came in. She had heard the scream. Montalbano mouthed, “Water.”

  The woman came back with a pitcher and a glass, and left the room right away. Slowly, the inspector put his hand on Rosanna’s head and started running it gently over her hair. Afterward, the light weeping turned into a crying jag, but not a desperate one, rather one of relief. Only then the inspector asked her if she wanted some water. Rosanna nodded yes. But her hands were shaking too much, and she could only drink if Montalbano held the glass for her, as if she were a little girl.

  “Get up.”

  Rosanna shook her head. She wanted to stay that way, maybe because that way she didn’t have to look Montalbano in the eyes. Was she ashamed of what she was about to say?

  “It wasn’t because he raped me.”

  The inspector was lost for a moment. Had he gotten everything wrong? Had all his reasoning led him astray?

  “Why then?”

  “Because of what he did after.”

  What did she mean by that? Because of what Cusumano forced her to do while he held her against her will? Or because of what she was forced to endure at the hands of others with Cusumano’s approval? He thought it better not to ask and just waited.

  “They picked me up one night, after they had seen me with a boy I was dating. His name is …”

  “Pino Dibetta.”

  The girl, surprised, raised her head for a moment, looked at him, and then put it back down.

  “… A car came by, a man got out, it was Cusumano, he grabbed me by the arm, he twisted it, he forced me to get in, the car left, the driver was a fat man with a stain on his face …”

  “Ninì Brucculeri,” the inspector said. “Just so you know, I arrested him. He tried to kill me last night. Go on.”

  “… They brought me to a house in the country, then Brucculeri left and Cusumano, threatening me and punching me in the stomach, made me take off my clothes, then he took off his clothes and had his way with me for the whole evening, the whole night, and the morning after. Then, around noon, Brucculeri came back. Cusumano told him that I was all his, put his clothes back on, and left. And Brucculeri was worse than Cusumano. The following morning, at dawn, he left, too, but before he did he told me that if I spoke to anyone about it, if I said what had happened to me, they were going to kill me, then he punched me hard and I fainted. When I came to, I was alone. I washed myself in a well nearby, and went back home. It took me three hours to get back there. I could barely walk. And as I was going back home, I swore I was going to kill Cusumano, not because he had raped me, but because he had given me away like a rag doll. Four days later, as he was getting married …”

  “… They arrested him and sentenced him to three years.”

  “Yes. And I kept thinking about killing him. I couldn’t think about anything else. I have to kill him … I have to kill him as soon as he sets foot out of prison … Night and day, the same thought over and over again, all the time. But how was I going to do it? It would be years before he would be out of prison, and I still couldn’t figure out how to do it. Then, one day …”

  “You met Mrs. Siracusa at the market and she made you an offer. You accepted and you went to work for her. And that’s how you met her husband.”

  “Yes. He liked women. He wanted to take advantage of me, but I told him no at first. Then, just to show off, he showed me his gun collection.”

  “Including the illegal ones in the hidden drawer.”

  “Yes. Then I did what he wanted me to do.”

  “Did he give you the revolver?”

  “No. The only thing he did for me was fill out the application for the prison visit. And that wasn’t a mistake, like you said earlier. I didn’t say anything at that visit. He was the one who spoke.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said: ‘What, you can’t wait for me to give it to you again? Just wait till I get out, I’ll take care of you.’ And then he started to laugh, but I knew he was scared.”

  “Then why did you go in the first place?”

  “You understood everything else but you don’t get this? I went because if I couldn’t kill him, I could use that prison visit to say that that was when he asked me to kill the judge. Pap
ers don’t lie.”

  “Genius. Go on.”

  “In the meantime, Siracusa started trusting me. He showed me where he kept the key to his drawer. That’s how I managed to steal the revolver and load it—he had told me how to do that, too, just to show off.”

  There was nothing more to say. Montalbano leaned forward, picked the girl up by her arms, and stood her up as he got up himself. Rosanna kept her head down.

  “Look at me.”

  She looked at him. Strangely, the girl’s eyes seemed less black and less deep. Earlier they had been a dark and muddy well, at the bottom of which you would have thought poisonous snakes were slithering about. Now you could look into them without feeling uncomfortable. Or rather, the only discomfort left was the fear of pleasantly falling into them.

  “The two of us have to make a pact. I hope I can get you out of this mess without charging you with anything. You’ll go free and I guarantee that Cusumano will go to jail for a few years. But you have to be ready to testify that Cusumano raped you. I’ll try to spare you that humiliation, trust me, but I have to know that you’re ready to do it.”

  Unexpectedly, Rosanna hugged him and held him tightly. She pressed her whole body against his. Montalbano dove into her warmth, into her feminine scent. How beautiful it was to drown in that body! Without knowing it, his arms reciprocated the embrace. They remained like that for a little while, in silence, communicating only through their scents.

  “I’ll do everything you tell me,” Rosanna spoke into his right ear.

  Montalbano remembered an old prayer, one the priest had taught him in boarding school:

  Saint Anthony, my dear,

  When the evil one is near,

  Turn me as hard as wood,

  So that I can stay good.

  He didn’t know for sure if the “evil one” had taken the shape of the girl, but he was certainly beginning to feel as hard as wood, although not in the sense the prayer implied. The only thing to do was call for help.

  “Mrs. Fazio!” he yelled, with a voice that sounded like a rooster’s cock-a-doodle-doo.

  Rosanna let him go immediately.

  He showed up at the station just before five. Fazio walked him to his office as fast as a cannonball.