IM11 The Wings of the Sphinx (2009)

by Andrea Camilleri

  So much for the sunset. When he got to Marinella, the sun had already long gone down. He flicked on the TV, tuned in to the Free Channel, and immediately saw the photograph of the dead girl’s tattoo on the screen. Nicolò Zito was doing what he had asked him to do.

  Montalbano watched the newscast to the end. Four hundred Third World refugees had come ashore from Lampedusa only to be sent on to concentration—well, “first reception” camps. A branch of the Banca Regionale was robbed by three armed men. A fire had broken out in a supermarket, a clear case of arson. Some poor homeless wretch living on alms was beaten within an inch of his life by five youths who had decided to kill a little time that way. A fourteen-year-old girl was raped by—

  He changed the channel, switching to TeleVigàta. And there was Pippo Ragonese, the political editorialist with a face like a chicken’s ass, speaking.The inspector was about to change the channel again when Ragonese mentioned his name.

  “. . . thanks to the well-known inertia—and there’s no better way to define it, only worse—of Inspector Montalbano, we are certain that this new, horrendous crime discovered at the Salsetto will also remain unsolved. That poor girl’s murderer can sleep peacefully. Also unsolved, to date, is the peculiar kidnapping of businessman Arturo Picarella. And in this regard I cannot refrain from bringing to the attention of our viewers that Mrs. Picarella has complained to us about the discourteous treatment, to say the least, she has received from the above-mentioned Inspector Montalbano—”

  He turned it off and went to open the refrigerator. His heart leapt at the sight of four mullets prepared as God had intended, ready for frying. Pippo Ragonese could go take it you-know-where. Montalbano slid them from the plate into a skillet, which he set over a burner. Then, to avoid a repeat of the previous evening, when Livia’s phone call had sent his meal to the dogs, he ran to unplug the telephone.

  Seated outside on the veranda, he dispatched the mullets, which had come out well but not as crispy as Adelina was capable of making them. Since he still felt a little hungry, he searched the fridge and found half a dish of leftover caponata. Sniffing it carefully, he convinced himself it was all right, took it outside, and wolfed it down.

  He plugged the phone back in.Then he wondered: What if Livia had called and found no one at home? Considering that seas were rough between them—with gale-force winds, in fact—Livia was liable to think that he had disconnected the phone precisely because he didn’t want to hear from her. It was best if he called her first. He dialed her number at Boccadasse, but there was no answer. And so he tried her cell phone.

  “The telephone of the person you are trying to reach may be turned off or—”

  Maybe she’d gone to the movies and would check in later.

  He sat back down on the veranda to smoke a cigarette.

  Unfortunately my relationship with Livia has reached a crossroads, and I must absolutely make a choice, he thought, feeling himself overwhelmed by a wave of melancholy that immediately made his eyes glisten.

  It took a great deal of courage to throw away years and years of love, trust, complicity. What he had with Livia was an out-and-out marriage, even if not sanctioned by the law or the Church. He felt like laughing whenever he heard bishops and cardinals make public proclamations against recognizing common-law marriage. How many marriages celebrated with the requisite priest and regalia had he seen last much less time than his arrangement with Livia?

  On the other hand, maybe it took even greater courage to carry on in the situation they found themselves in now.

  One thing was certain: They needed a clarification, of the ferocious, mutually flaying kind that draws blood. But that sort of clarification couldn’t be made over the phone; the voice alone wouldn’t suffice. Their two bodies also had to take part. One look would have told far more than a hundred words.

  The telephone rang. He looked at his watch. It was eleven in the evening, and it must surely be Livia. As he was going to pick up, he was thinking he would suggest that she come down to Vigàta on the following Saturday.

  “Inspector Montalbano?” said an old man’s voice he didn’t recognize at first.

  “Yes, who’s this?”

  “Headmaster Burgio.”

  Good God, how long had it been since he’d heard from him! After the headmaster’s wife died, Burgio had moved to Fela, to the home of a daughter of his, a teacher.

  How old was he these days? Ninety?

  “Forgive me for calling so late,” said Burgio.

  “Not at all! How are you?”

  “I get by. I’m calling you because I saw the tattoo of the poor murdered girl on the Free Channel.”

  “Did you recognize her?”

  “No, I phoned you about the butterfly tattoo.”

  “I didn’t know you were an expert on butterflies.”

  “I’m not, in fact, but my son-in-law is. I called you up so late because tomorrow morning he’s leaving and will be away for a week. If you don’t mind, I’ll put him on for you.”

  “By all means. Thanks.”

  “Hello, this is Gaspare Leontini,” said Burgio’s son-in-law. “Since I’ve got a little butterfly collection—I’m just an amateur, mind you . . .”

  Those words set Montalbano’s mind wandering. Once upon a time, at least according to nineteenth-century novels, a butterfly collection was a profitable possession to have, in that it was an excellent pretext for luring a pretty girl to one’s bedroom.

  “Come and see my butterfly collection,” the mustachioed seducers in knickers would say, and the girls would take the bait, or pretend to take the bait, and inevitably end up pinned like butterflies. After that, pretty girls grew a little wiser, and if a man didn’t have a nice collection of checkbooks . . .

  “Hello, are you still there?” asked Leontini.

  “Of course, of course. Go on.”

  “Well, when I saw that image on television, I said to my father-in-law that perhaps I could . . . but maybe you already know everything.”

  He needed a little encouragement, did Signor Leontini.

  “I don’t know anything at all, I assure you.”

  “All right, then. That butterfly is a sphinx.”

  O matre santa, what’s a sphinx got to do with butterflies? Wasn’t the sphinx in Egypt? This was all he needed.

  “A sphinx in what sense, if I may ask?”

  “A sphinx moth, actually. The Sphingidae are a particular family of moth. There are another one hundred and eighty thousand known species of Lepidoptera, but generally they are divided into two subspecies: the homoneura, the main family of which are the hepialidae, and the heteroneura—”

  “Is it a sexual difference?” asked Montalbano, utterly confused.

  “I don’t understand,” said Leontini.

  “Well, since you said ‘homo-neura’ and ‘hetero-neura,’ I thought that—”

  “It has nothing to do with sex.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “And the heteroneura include the families of the Tineidae, Tortricidae, Alucitidae, Pyralidae . . .”—And what about the Atridae?—“. . . those, in short, known as microlepidoptera, which also include common nocturnal moths . . .”

  Montalbano rebelled, refusing to have any truck with common nocturnal moths.

  “Listen, Signor Leontini, could we get back to the sphinx?”

  “Of course, sorry for digressing. The sphingids are characterized by a fat hairy body and the fact that their hind wings are smaller than the forewings.”

  “How many wings does a moth usually have?”

  Leontini hesitated before answering. He must certainly have been wondering how there could be people on earth who had never taken a good look at a moth or a butterfly in their lives.

  “Four.”

  The inspector had never noticed this, and he felt a little embarrassed.

  “The sphingids are migratory,” Leontini continued.

  “Migratory? Don’t they have very short lives?”

 
“The species is capable of crossing an entire ocean.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s true, though many people don’t know it. During migration, they fly in a straight line, and once they’ve reached their destination, they resume flying in their more typical manner, in short, broken lines, as if uncertain and confused. And of course they’re nocturnal, as I’m sure you’ve seen.”

  He never even saw butterflies on spring mornings.

  “Tell me, Signor Leontini, do they have a country of origin or preference?”

  “Well, most moths and butterflies are nonmigratory. To give you a few examples, in Peru you’ll find Catopsilia argante, in Colombia Morpho cypris, in the Moluccas you’ve got Papilio deiphontes, or, again in Peru, Lycorea cleobaea, or . . .”

  Matre santa, the floodgates had opened!

  “And where does one find the sphingids?”

  “Those moths are happy just about anywhere, so long as there are potato fields nearby.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because their larvae live on potatoes.”

  The inspector thanked Leontini, thanked Burgio, too, and hung up.

  By now he could have written a C+ term paper, at the very least, on Lepidoptera. But not one new line on the investigation. The phone call had been as useless as it was long. He had wanted to know if the image of that particular moth might actually mean something, but the answer was no. Maybe the girl had chosen it at random, perhaps flipping through the pages of a catalogue.

  After spending an hour on the veranda, smoking and watching the faraway lights of a pair of boats, it was clear that Livia wasn’t going to call, and so he went to bed.

  Before he fell asleep, a sudden, painful thought flashed through his mind.

  The love between him and Livia had been exactly like the flight of a sphinx moth.

  At first, and for many years, it had been straight, sure, focused, and determined, capable of spanning an entire ocean.

  Then, at a certain point, that splendid, straight line of flight had broken apart, zigzagging this way and that. It became—how had Leontini put it?—uncertain and confused.

  The thought tormented him, ruining his night’s sleep.

  4

  In the station’s parking lot he pulled up alongside a Ferrari. Who could it belong to? Surely to a cretin, whatever the actual name on the registration.

  For only a cretin could tool around town in a car like that. Then there was a second category, the imbeciles, closely related to cretins with Ferraris, made up of people who, to go shopping, needed to climb into an SUV with four-wheel drive, fourteen lamps between headlights, road lights and fog lights, shovels and pickaxes, emergency ladder, compass, and special windshield wipers for eventual sandstorms. And what about the latest maniacs, the ones with the Hummers?

  “Ahh Chief !” Catarella exclaimed. “There’s summon ’ere waitin’ for yiz since nine ’cause he wants a talk to ya poissonally in poisson.”

  “Does he have an appointment?”

  “No, sir. But ’e says iss important. ’Is name is . . .” He stopped and looked down at a scrap of paper. “ ’E writ it down for me ’ere. ’Is name is De Dodo.”

  Was it possible? Like the extinct flightless bird?

  “You sure that’s his name, Cat?”

  “Cross my heart, Chief. Then there’d be two phone calls from two people who was lookin’—”

  “You can tell me about it later.”

  Naturally, the fortyish man who came into his office had a different name from the one written down and cited by Catarella: Francesco Di Noto. Decked out in Armani, top-of-the-line loafers worn without socks, Rolex, shirt open to a golden crucifix suffocating in a forest of unkempt, rampant black hair.

  He was surely the idiot tooling around in the Ferrari. But the inspector wanted confirmation.

  “My compliments on your beautiful car.”

  “Thanks. It’s a 360 Modena. I’ve also got a Porsche Carrera.”

  Double cretin with fireworks.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Actually I was hoping to do something for you.”

  Double cretin with fireworks, and cocky to boot.

  “Oh, yeah? What?”

  “I got back from Cuba day before yesterday after spending a month there. I go there often.”

  “On vacation or because you’re a Communist?”

  The other gave him a bewildered look and then started laughing.

  “What did I say that was so funny?”

  “Me, a Communist? With a Ferrari and a Porsche? . . . Can you really imagine me as a Communist?”

  “Actually, Mr. Di Noto, I can. And how. Precisely because you have two cars like yours, wear Armani, and own a Rolex . . . But let’s drop it, shall we? It’s better that way. So you go to Cuba for cultural reasons?”

  He was purposely trying to provoke him, but the guy didn’t even realize it.

  “I go to Cuba because I have three girlfriends there!”

  “Three? All at the same time?”

  “Yes. But none of them knows about the others, naturally.”

  “Naturally. But tell me something, just out of personal curiosity: How many have you got here?”

  Di Noto laughed.

  “Here I’ve got a wife and a two-year-old son. And it was my father-in-law who put up the capital to start my own company, you know what I mean? Here I can’t mess around; I gotta play it straight.”

  I hope your wife also has three boyfriends, Montalbano thought, without you knowing about it, naturally.

  But he didn’t voice his thought and merely said:

  “Sorry, but what line of business is your company in?”

  “Fish export.”

  So that was why the price of fish had become so stratospheric! To pay for this asshole’s cars and girlfriends!

  “You were telling me about Cuba.”

  “Right. My very last evening in Havana, which is to say, three days ago, I went with Myra, one of my three girlfriends, to a nightclub. All at once I saw a guy come in and sit down at the table next to ours, accompanied by a really fine-looking blonde. He was completely drunk and looked familiar to me. And, in fact, after staring at him for a while, I realized who he was.”

  “And who was he?”

  “Arturo Picarella.”

  Montalbano jumped out of his chair.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely sure. I didn’t know a thing about what had happened to him, but yesterday my wife told me he was kidnapped and never heard from again. My jaw dropped, but I didn’t say anything to my wife. I wanted to come here first to find out what I should do.”

  “You did the right thing. Listen, Mr. Di Noto, had you been anywhere else before you went to the establishment where you think you saw Picarella?”

  “Of course. From seven to nine o’clock, I was at Anya’s—we’ll call her my oldest girlfriend—then from nine-thirty to eleven I was at Tanya’s—we’ll call her my middle girlfriend—and then from midnight to two, at Myra’s—”

  “—and we’ll call her—” said Montalbano.

  “—my new girlfriend.”

  “I see. So at what time did you go to that nightclub?”

  “About two-thirty in the morning.”

  “Naturally, you’d had something to drink at your various girlfriends’ places?”

  “Of course. I see what you’re getting at. No, sir, I wasn’t drunk. The man I saw was most definitely Arturo Picarella. I’ve been playing with him at the club for years.”

  “So why didn’t you go up to him to say hello?”

  “Are you kidding? It might have put him in an awkward position.”

  “Your testimony, Mr. Di Noto, is certainly an important one. But it’s not enough to—”

  “Have a look at this,” the other interrupted him.

  He pulled a photograph out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Montalbano.

  It showed Di Noto kissing a girl. But the pho
tographer had also captured part of the table next to them. The face of the man whose ear was being licked by a blonde was undoubtedly the missing Picarella, whom Montalbano had seen again and again in the dozens of photographs brought to him by Signora Ciccina.

  So Augello and Fazio had been wrong as to the country to which the man had fled to live it up in style with his lover. It was Cuba, not the Maldives or the Bahamas.

  “Can you leave me this photo?”

  “That’s easier said than done.”

  “Why?”

  “My good inspector, I would gladly let you have it, but if you then use it, and the photo appears on TV and my wife sees it, do you realize the trouble I’m gonna be in?”

  “I promise I’ll arrange it so that you’ll be entirely unrecognizable in the photo.”

  “I’m in your hands, Inspector.”

  As soon as the Ferrari drove off with a roar that shook even the floor of the office, the inspector called Catarella.

  “I want you to go to Montelusa to see your photographer friend. What’s his name again?”

  “Cicco De Cicco, Chief.”

  “You’re going to give him this photograph and tell him to print several copies of it after changing the features on this gentlemen here, the one kissing the girl. But be careful: only him. I mean it. Not the other man. Now go.”

  “Atcher service, Chief. But could you ’splain sumpin a me?”

  “Sure.”

  “Does ‘features’ mean ‘face’?”

  “Very good.”

  “Tanks. I’ll git Galluzzo to manna phones. Ah, an’ I wannit a say that two people called about the buttafly.”

  “Are we supposed to call them back or will they call us back?”

  Catarella looked dumbfounded.

  “They din’t say nuttin.”

  “But did they leave a phone number?”

  “Yessir. I writ it down on this piece a paper.”

  He handed it to Montalbano.

  “All right, then, go, but send me Galluzzo before he sits down at the switchboard.”

  On the piece of paper were the names of a certain Signor Gracezza and a certain Signora Appuntata, each followed by a number in which it was impossible to tell the fives from the sixes and the threes from the eights.