Anita Pastore sighed, looked at the inspector, and said: “But by now it doesn’t make much difference . . . he killed himself.”
A bell started ringing in Montalbano’s head.
“I’m sorry,” said the inspector, “but do you know why?”
“Why he killed himself? Because he was a fragile man, unprepared to face the problems of life, and so he chose to take himself out of the picture.”
Her answer was intended to close the subject, but now that the inspector knew why Catalanotti was so interested in her, he didn’t want to give up the bone.
“So you’re saying your brother was the weakest of you three?”
“I’m sorry, but what does that have to do with Carmelo’s death?” the woman asked, gripping the arms of her chair and looking him straight in the eye.
“I’ll be the one to decide about that,” Montalbano replied brusquely.
Anita settled back into her chair.
“Look, Inspector, it’s a sad, complicated story. There was a sudden, huge shortage of cash. Paolo was convinced that it was Giovanni who’d stolen it. I, a bit less so. Giovanni became, well, indignant and demoralized and didn’t really defend himself, and so his suicide seemed to me like a tacit admission of guilt.”
“And did Catalanotti ask you any questions about your brother’s suicide?” Montalbano asked.
“Yes, many. He even wanted a photo of Giovanni. And he said he’d also had a brother who committed suicide.”
Too bad Catalanotti was an only child, thought the inspector.
Then he asked: “But did Giovanni ever respond to your and your brother’s accusations?”
“He always claimed he was innocent but never produced any evidence.”
“A lack of evidence isn’t always a confirmation of guilt.”
“What are you trying to say, Inspector?”
“That his death might have been a reaction to being falsely accused by his brother and sister.”
Upon hearing these words, Anita became furious, leapt to her feet, and said in a voice more penetrating than an electric drill: “How dare you! I’m not staying in this office one more minute!”
And she headed for the door.
Fazio stood up to stop her, but Montalbano signaled to him to let her go. The woman opened the door and then slammed it behind her.
“Why’d you let her go?” asked Augello.
“Because, Mimì, I realized the real reason why Catalanotti was interested in her.”
“Then please let us in on it.”
Fazio resumed his place in front of the desk.
“The plot of the play Catalanotti wanted to stage has many similarities to the story of what happened to the Pastore family business.”
“And what play is this?” asked Augello.
Montalbano didn’t feel like recounting the plot of Dangerous Corner yet again.
“Have Fazio fill you in on it. I have to go out now. There’s something important I have to do.”
He got up, went out of the building, and headed for the nearest café. His hunger was making its needs felt, since he’d skipped lunch at Enzo’s. The bar had some ham and cheese sandwiches. He ate four in a row. And washed it all down with a medium-sized beer.
Back in the office, he called for Fazio at once.
“The twenty-four hours we gave Nico and Margherita are up,” he said.
“Should I have them come here, or should we go there?”
Montalbano didn’t answer, but just sat there, lost in thought.
“Chief, what should we do?” Fazio ventured again a few moments later.
“I was just thinking that those two kids will either never admit that the gunman was their respective father and future father-in-law, or if they do, they’ll regret it for the rest of their lives. They’re good kids, after all.”
“So what are we gonna do?”
“Have you got the home phone number of Lo Bello?”
“Yessir, I do.”
“Then give him a ring and turn on the speakerphone. We’ll call Lo Bello in immediately for a chat. If he isn’t at home, see if you can find out where he is. And if they tell you, go and get him in person and bring him here. Let’s go!”
Fazio took a handful of scraps of paper out of his pocket, selected one, and started dialing.
“Hello, is this the Lo Bello residence?”
“Yes,” replied a male voice.
“Am I speaking with Signor Gaetano Lo Bello?”
“Yes. Mind telling me who the fuck you are?”
“Yes, I’m calling from the police commissariat of Vigàta. Chief Inspector Montalbano wants to see you at once.”
“Nice to hear, but at the moment I’m busy, so don’t bust my chops.”
“All right, then, I’ll be at your place in five minutes and will drag you in to the police station in handcuffs.”
A litany of curses came through the receiver.
Then the man hung up.
“We’d better go and get him before he escapes,” Montalbano said to Fazio, who in the meantime had stood up and was putting on his jacket as he hurried towards the door.
At that moment Augello came back in.
“Salvo, I went onto the internet to read part of the text of Dangerous Corner. Damn! The similarities with the Pastore family are indeed very striking: the two brothers, one of whom commits suicide . . . One thing is certain: This Catalanotti was one really strange guy.”
“In what sense, Mimì?”
“Well, to me, at least, more than a moneylender or a man of the theater, he seems to have been an out-and-out cop. Or, better yet, a truffle dog! How the hell did he manage to find a family that corresponded perfectly with the one in the play? Salvo, do you know whether or not he was really writing a novel?”
“Gimme a break! A novel, yeah, right! You see, Mimì, Catalanotti’s theatrical method was always to start with a concrete fact; in this case, it was a real find for him to encounter a family in which almost the same things happened as in the play.”
“So what need was there to have concrete fact just to stage an imagined story?”
“I’ll try to sum it up for you, Mimì. Catalanotti had a theory that was based not on realism, not on verisimilitude, but on something he called similveracity. And I’ll leave it at that. All I can tell you is that on this basis, he would dig into people’s minds, in search of that concrete reality in anyone wishing to act in his play. And that’s why he turned them inside out and outside in like socks. This is what I was able to gather from reading his notes in the folders.”
“Speaking of which, Salvo, how far along are you in your reading?”
“It’s a long and complicated process, Mimì,” said the inspector, also thinking of his affair with Antonia, “but I think I’m on the right track. I’ve managed to isolate the audition reports for the actors trying out for Dangerous Corner.”
“And who plays Olwen?” Mimì immediately asked.
“I don’t know yet. There are two or three possible actresses who . . .”
The little march that his cell phone began playing made Montalbano give a start in his chair.
He took out the phone. It was Antonia.
For a moment he couldn’t make up his mind. Should he answer? What if Mimì managed to figure things out?
“Well? You gonna answer it or not?” said Augello.
Montalbano summoned his courage and said in a flat voice: “Hello.”
Antonia seemed to understand at once.
“You’re not alone?”
“Yes, I’m in a meeting,” Montalbano informed her.
“I’m confirming for this evening. Give me the address.”
Montalbano felt lost. There was no way he could pronounce the name “Biancamano” in front of Mimì.
“I can’t.”
“I understand. And so?”
“Can I call you back?”
“I’m about to go into a meeting myself.”
“I could come and pick you up at home. Could you give me the address?”
Antonia giggled and then took revenge.
“I can’t.”
“All right, I’ll find it on my own. I’ll be there at eight. Okay?”
“Oh, my, if you find out where I live!” said Antonia, laughing, as she hung up.
“What a mysterious phone call, Inspector Montalbano,” Mimì Augello commented slyly. “I smell a woman.”
“Mind your own business, Mimì.”
“Fine, fine. Just promise me that when it’s my turn, you don’t start in with your fucking moralizing . . .”
“Let’s get back to Catalanotti,” said the inspector, changing the subject.
“Can I ask a question?” asked Augello.
“Go right ahead.”
“Why are you so jealously guarding Catalanotti’s folders?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re keeping them all to yourself like some kind of secret. If you’d talk to us about them or bring them here to the office, we might be able to help you.”
“You’re right,” Montalbano conceded.
What he was jealously guarding, of course, was the secret of Antonia.
15
The door flew violently open. The gust sent two sheets of paper that had been on the desk fluttering to the ground. As Montalbano bent down to pick them up, he froze.
An ogre had appeared in the doorway.
A real fairy-tale ogre: a mountain of a man, dressed in rags, head resting directly on the shoulders, hair a dense, tangled forest, teeth—or those remaining—all yellow and black, face dirty and oily as if he’d just finished eating Tom Thumb.
Montalbano breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the guy was handcuffed.
A shove from Fazio, who along with two uniformed cops was behind the man, pushed him into the middle of the room.
In the photograph and the artist’s reconstruction the ogre had looked relatively civilized, and so the images in the end hardly resembled the man before them at all.
Only then did Montalbano notice that Fazio was holding a blood-reddened handkerchief against his mouth.
“What happened?” he asked.
“This bastard reacted and punched me in the face, so I had to handcuff him.”
“Tha’ss right,” the man said, “but tell ’im the whole story. First he kicked me in the balls and then—”
“Okay, okay,” Montalbano said, cutting him off. “Signor Lo Bello, do you realize that by forcefully resisting arrest by a public official you’ve already reserved a few years in jail for yourself?”
“Oh, you can imagine how scared I am!” said the ogre with a mocking grin.
“Well, I wanted to let you know that this is just the beginning. We have a witness who saw you shoot your daughter’s boyfriend.”
“I didn’t shoot nobody.”
“You can tell that to the prosecutor. As of this moment, you are under arrest for attempted murder.”
And without saying anything else, Montalbano signaled to the others to put him in a holding cell.
It wasn’t an easy task, however. The man put up a fierce resistance, and they practically needed a capstan to move him an inch. Fazio and the two cops were forced to push him to the door, with the ogre sneering all the while: “I really wanna see this witness o’ yours!”
And he went on, saying that in any case he would be free again the following day, that justice was for assholes and he wasn’t an asshole, and these four shitty policemen were only good for TV.
The litany continued well into the corridor, and then the ogre suddenly fell silent.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” his voice rang out a moment later, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.
Hearing these words, Montalbano got up and went out to see what was happening.
Standing in front of the ogre was a man of about thirty next to a woman and a younger woman holding a baby in her arms.
The policemen dragged the ogre towards the holding cell as the brute resumed his yelling.
“Get back home, you big whore!”
The inspector went up to the new arrivals and asked: “And who are you, may I ask?”
The first to speak was the young man.
“I’m Gaspare Lo Bello, and this is my mother, Nunziata; my wife, Caterina; and my son, Tanino.”
“Please come into my office,” said Montalbano, leading the way.
They all went in. Fazio sat the two women and the baby down on the little sofa and gave up his usual chair to Gaspare.
Gaspare was again the first to speak.
“I’m Gaetano Lo Bello’s son. We’re here to report him for repeated domestic violence.”
The mother started crying.
The daughter-in-law put her arm around the woman’s shoulders, hugged her, and whispered: “C’mon, Mama, don’t cry.”
Montalbano observed a few seconds of silence, wondering how such a nasty ogre could have sired a pair of children as honest and polite as Gaspare and Margherita. The answer was that the credit could only have been the wife’s.
“I realize,” said the inspector, “how hard it must be for you to file this report, and I thank you for the courage you’ve shown. But before we proceed any further, I have to ask you an even more difficult question. I’m referring to the attempted murder of Margherita’s boyfriend.”
Apparently the Lo Bellos were expecting this question. They all looked down at the floor and remained silent.
“There’s one thing I want to know: Did any of you see him leave the house that morning?”
“Not me or Caterina,” said Gaspare.
The inspector then directly addressed the mother, who covered her face with her hands.
“If you like, you can answer me with a nod or a shake of the head. Did your husband tell you what he intended to do before going out?”
The woman shook her head.
“Did you have any idea of what he had in mind?”
The woman nodded and started weeping convulsively.
Gaspare spoke again.
“Mama told us she saw him open the closet and take out a box.”
“Was there a weapon in the box?” asked the inspector.
This time it was the young man who nodded.
“Okay, that’ll be enough,” said Montalbano. “Thank you for your help.”
Then, to Fazio: “Take these people into your office, draft a statement of their accusation for domestic violence, and write out everything that’s been said here.”
Montalbano stood up, shook hands with all three, stroked the baby’s cheek, then went and sat back down.
When his office was at last empty, the inspector told himself that the ogre absolutely had to be sent to jail, because if the children and the wife had succeeded in overcoming every resistance they might have to admitting to something so devastating as domestic violence, it meant that all limits had been exceeded in that household and the next step the brute might take could well turn out to be a tragic one.
He wondered curiously about Nico and Margherita, who still hadn’t given any signs of life.
The phone rang.
“Ahh, Chief, Chief, ’ere’s a couple a youngsters ’ere. One’s the dilicate kid ’at got shot but wasn’t killed. Remember?”
Speak of the devil.
“Yes, of course,” Montalbano said curtly. “Send them in.”
The moment he saw them the inspector was convinced that they had no intention of talking. He sat them down and asked brusquely: “So, what have you got to say to me?”
The kid spoke fi
rst.
“Inspector, if you really want to know the truth, Margherita and I haven’t even discussed the incident since the last time.”
“So you think it’s normal for someone to shoot at you?”
“That’s not what I meant, Inspector. Of course it’s not normal. It’s just that we have nothing to add to what we’ve already each told you separately. Neither I nor Margherita saw the person who shot me.”
Without saying a word, Montalbano stuck a hand in his jacket pocket and pulled out a small sheet of paper. He set it down on the desk and said to the two: “Have a good look at this. The artist’s reconstruction was made on the basis of the witness’s description. Have you anything to say?”
This time it was Margherita who spoke.
“Yes, it looks a little like Papa, but it’s not him.”
“There’s something I should tell you: At this point you could both be charged with giving false testimony.”
The young couple turned pale.
Montalbano continued. “All I can do now is advise you to find a good lawyer; you’ve painted yourselves into a corner. It will be rather hard to defend your position. You’ll be summoned directly by the prosecutor. That’ll be all, thanks. Good-bye.”
The two seemed disappointed. They’d probably planned to deliver a longer, more convincing argument.
But then, at that moment, a baby was heard crying in the corridor.
Montalbano leapt at the opportunity. He sprang to his feet, rushed out of the office, and said: “Please come in here for a moment, Gaspare.”
Before the stunned saucer-eyes of the couple, the man appeared with Tanino in his arms, trying to comfort the baby.
Gaspare, Margherita, and Nico all stared at one another in astonishment for a few moments, then Margherita asked in a faint voice: “What are you doing here?”
“I didn’t come alone. Caterina and Mama are here, too. It’s time to tell the truth, Margherì.”
Margherita looked at him almost hatefully.
“Why did you do it?”
“Because I don’t want this child to live through what we’ve had to live through.”
Gaspare laid the baby in her arms and, putting a hand on her shoulder, said: “Come, I’ll take you to Mama.”
The Sicilian Method Page 18